Family Survives
by ragmanthemadman
Summary: An American beta tester gets SAO for his family, but when they all get trapped in the game, they have to stick together to survive. (Rated M for sexual themes and Language. OC x OC, OC x Silica, Asuna x Kirito).
1. Link Start!

**Hello Fanfiction! This is our first story for Sword Art Online. I say our because this is a co-op story with my girlfriend who is really into SAO and wanted help to write about it. Just to clarify a few things, we're going based off the anime and we're going to be using SAO: Infinity Moment to get the last 25 floors of Aincrad. We won't include Sinon or Leafa as this just breaks the timeline of the story (The one we're going for anyway). We would include Hollow Fragment but we feel like that adds too much to the story. We will not be using ALO in this story because we didn't particularly enjoy that part. Anyway, that's the basis for the story. So, without further ado, let's get started.**

It might have taken a while, but I finally got the game that I've been waiting years for, Sword Art Online. It was announced two years ago, and I was able to be a part of the beta test that was held just a few months ago. This basically guaranteed me a copy of the game, but I didn't want to be the only person to play this game, so I brought two more copies, one for my younger cousin and one for my girlfriend. It was almost midnight in America, and the servers were about to launch. I was finishing a skype call with my cousin and my girlfriend so that we could link up in SAO when we make the jump.

"I can't wait to start the game. Is it as good as you say cousin?" My cousin is 13 years old and he always looked up to me as a brother. He was around five feet six inches tall and had short, black hair, brown eyes, and dark brown skin.

"Oh, you bet it is cousin. The game has so much depth to it, it's almost like we are living a separate life in the game." Over the past decade, games have gotten more and more real. Virtual reality was becoming a big thing. However, when it began it wasn't as immersive as we would want it to be. We still had to worry about real world obstacles and that meant that we couldn't have a lot of open world games where you can explore. Well, technically you could, but you were using a controller to walk around instead of doing all the walking yourself. With the creation of the Nervegear, however, it makes it so that you are completely immersed in the game you are playing. It's like it separates your mind from your body and you are taken to a virtual world. It's an amazing feeling when you are playing.

"We should get the friend requests out of the way now so that it will be easier to meet with each other when we go in." The game requires you to set up an account before you start. You could add friends and chat with them without actually being in the game. I'm not very good at remembering things so I wrote my username and password on a piece of paper and put it on my drawer.

"Ok what are your names again?" My girlfriend is 17 years old with ocean blue eyes, long, blonde hair, and light skin. She has flawless skin and is about five feet ten inches.

"Mine is ragman." (I know I used my name as the OC's avatar name. I'm not good with coming up with names ok) I'm 17 years old with brown eyes, short, black hair, and golden brown skin. I have a scar on my left eye from a fight I got into when I was younger. I'm pretty tall, around six feet to be exact.

"I'm DominatorDj" My cousin always used that as his name for anything, which didn't surprise me.

"Mine is Nina. I'm sending a request to you guys now."

"Are you sure you should use your real life nickname as your avatar name?" I asked her. To be honest, I'm surprised that no one took that name. Maybe it's so simple that no one would think to use it.

"No one knows that." For now, at least, but people might figure out that it is her real nickname. I'll let it slide though. The notification came up on my window, notifying me that I had two friend requests. I accepted them both and took a look at the time, it was 11:58.

"Guys we should get ready. Servers go live in a few minutes."

"OK!" Both of them said at the same time with eagerness in their voice. Almost instantly after that, they disconnected from the chat and I was left staring at my wallpaper. An old picture of me and my parents together, smiling happily at with an amusement park in the background. I smiled as I saw the picture and then went to get my Nervegear. I didn't know how long we would be on so I plugged it into the charger next to my bed and put it on. The battery with the charging symbol on it and the time, 11:59, were the only two things I could see. I laid down on the bed, waiting for the time to hit 12:00. It seemed like minutes waiting but it changed to 12:00, so I closed my eyes and said the two words that would begin my journey.

"Link Start!" The streams of colors rushed passed my eyes and the system did its check of my five senses. After putting in my username and password, the title screen of sword art online covered my eyes. I was then met with the character customization screen. I didn't make a lot of changes to my character, as the game reads your face and shows you what you look like as the base model. The only change that I made to my character was that I covered the scar on my eye. Though it would make me look tough in game, it carries too many memories that I don't want to get into details about. DJ and Nina are the only two people that know the story behind it, and I wish to keep it that way. As soon as my character was done I hit enter and I was teleported into Aincrad, the first floor, Town of Beginnings. As soon as I got in I flicked my hand down and I went to my friends list to see if the others were online. Both had a red light next to their name which meant that they were offline.

'Where are they?' I thought to myself as I took a quick walk around town. The servers just launched and already there are so many people here. Some were trying to form parties; others were hitting on girls. Some were just trying to find their way around. Because I was in the beta test I knew where to go, but I wanted to wait for the others to arrive before I started. So I found a bench to sit on and just waited. It took a few minutes but I saw the status next to their names change from red to green. I tried to see who spawned in and sure enough they were right in the middle of town. DJ changed his appearance to make him appear more mature than he really is. Nina didn't change much of her character other than the fact that she changed her hair from blonde to pink, which didn't surprise me, she liked changing her hair color.

"Over here guys!" I yelled towards them. They looked in my direction and walked over to me. "What took you so long?"

"I had to do that calibration test." DJ said.

"Same here and I have to admit I felt weird doing it." The calibration test is something that you have to do when you first start the Nervegear. It makes you touch your body a few times, feeling yourself a little bit. I can see why Nina said she felt weird toing it. She doesn't lack any size up there, if you know what I mean.

"Where do we go?" DJ asked me.

"Don't be so eager, you guys have to learn a bit about the game first."

"We can learn as we go. Just tell us where we can fight some monsters." My cousin is always so eager to play a game that he doesn't take the time to learn it first. This isn't a new FPS game with similar controls as any other. This is a completely different game, one that the two of them have never played before.

"Ok then, the fields are out this way. Follow me." I turned away and started walking out of town.

"Wait a sec, how come you have a sword and we don't?" Nina asked while pointing at my sheathed beginner's sword. Neither of them had a clue as to how to equip a sword. I don't even think they know how to open their menu.

"Oh now you want to learn how to play." DJ just scoffed at me and then turned away from me, as if he was frustrated with me. "First off you open your menu by moving your arm down like this." I moved my arm in a downward motion which, in turn, opened my menu. They followed my movement exactly and their menus came up. It scared Nina a bit though as she gasped when she saw it appear in front of her. "At the top you will see an icon that looks like a single person. If you tap it, a side menu will open with three sections: Equipment, Items, and skills. To equip your sword, go to Equipment and select the beginner's sword." They were following along as I was speaking. "When you do that, three icons will pop up, a 'play' button, a dash button, and an X button. Press the 'play' button to equip, the dash to unequip, and X to discard." The two of them followed my instructions and within no time they both had a sheathed sword at their side. DJ immediately pulled his out and started swinging it around.

"This is cool, I feel the grip of it and even its weight." He swung his sword some more until he nearly hit someone.

"Hey DJ be careful. You shouldn't hit other people. You can hurt; even kill other people in this game. Although we are in a safe zone so no one can get hurt, but people might think you are attacking them and will challenge you to a duel." DJ stopped swinging his sword and sheathed it. I went to the submenu that had an icon of two people. Three text popped up, guild, friends, and party. I went to party and chose start party. After that I went to invite players, then friends, then I put a checkmark next to their names and hit the blue button. On cue, both of them had a notification bubble flashing in front of them. They both tapped it and read the description on the screen in front of them. They then both hit the blue button to accept my party invite. When they did that both of their names appeared below mine with their HP bars under them. Nina took notice of this and she asked me a question.

"What happens when you die?" She asked nervously.

"In the beta a black screen would appear with the red letters 'you are dead'. You were then given an option to spawn with a penalty or wait for someone to revive you. I was playing with someone all the time so I never had to spawn with a penalty. I don't even know what the penalty is."

"Who'd you play with?"

"Someone named Kirito. We both were adamant solo players, but we found common ground and started to party up whenever we played. I wonder if he got the full game?" I was going to search his name up but DJ got impatient.

"Alright we got the gist of it, let's go fight some beasts." I just laughed a bit and closed my menu.

"Alright, follow me then." I started to head out of town towards the open green fields. There we could get some fighting done.

On the way there we saw multiple shops and players, everything seemed to be working like a busy town. When we arrived at the fields we all paused to take in the sights. The graphics were so real, a little bit more polished than the beta. The fields were a true grassy green with individual pieces of grass. The world seemed so alive with a real-time day-night cycle. Of course, since this game was made in Japan, and the fact it has only one server, they only use Japan's time for the day-night cycle. Even though it's midnight where we live, it's the exact opposite in Japan. The sun is shining bright with a few clouds blocking it every few seconds. You want attention to detail, SAO is the game that does it extremely well.

After roaming in the fields for a few minutes we encountered a boar. The lowest level monster in the game, yet can still kill someone who isn't familiar with the fighting system. DJ, as eager as he is, charges head on toward the boar. He unsheathed his sword and swung it as hard as he could. Unfortunately, he didn't do too much damage to the boar and the boar countered his attack. DJ got knocked back and his HP bar took a hit.

"How did I not do anything."

"Well there is a something in this game called sword skills. Right now there is only one and that is slash."

"How do you use it?"

"It's not too difficult. There is an initial motion that you have to do, when you do that, you will feel the skill start to take effect. Once you feel it, just drive your attack into your opponent and the system will do the rest." He looked a little confused when I said that but he just got into a stance and started to wind up his sword. When he did, his sword started glowing and he charged into the boar, slicing his side, and causing his HP bar to empty. The boar disappeared into blue triangles and DJ got a little victory screen which shows the EXP, items and Col (money) he got. Also, because we're in a party, we all get a little experience from that kill as well.

"Wow that was so cool." DJ said looking at his victory screen. "I must be pretty strong if I was able to take that thing down on its own." He gave us a cocky smile. I just had to let him know the truth.

"While it's true you did good for your first time, that boar is the weakest enemy in the game." To prove my point, I gestured my arm in a 'look around you' motion. Around us were multiple boars. Some were just spawning in. he looked dismayed.

"That fight was more difficult than I thought it would be. And the fact that you just said that a boar is the weakest enemy in the game does not help with that." Me and Nina chuckled at how distraught he was.

We all continued to farm boars for EXP and Col. We got items too but they were just boar meat which is a D-class food item. It gave us a little bit more col at the end of the day but it wasn't the best award to get for a fight. It was about 6 in the morning (or 6 in the afternoon in Japan) before we felt satisfied for our first go around. We all got an upgraded iron sword, and I bought a shield because I like to protect people. It's been who I am for a while. The downside to having a shield in this game is that it lowers your agility, which affects how many times you attack. It also brings your evasiveness to zero so you can't dodge anything. On the contrary though, you gain a lot of defense and you can block attacks. Which in my opinion makes up for the loss of evasiveness. I recommended one to DJ and Nina but DJ said that it looks weird and Nina liked the idea of being evasive. We were just about done and was going to log off to get some sleep.

"That was fun cuz. We have to do this again soon." DJ said with an excited look on his face.

"We're on break, so we can play whenever." He seemed to enjoy that answer.

"Now how do you log off?" Nina asked me.

"Oh that's easy, just open the menu and on the bottom you'll find a gear. Tap it on the bottom you'll see…" I couldn't finish my sentence because as I was going through the motions myself I couldn't find the logout button. The others could tell that something was wrong through my confused look.

"What's wrong?" Nina asked.

"The logout button isn't here. There's no logout button." I was wondering what could've happened to cause this. Is it a bug, a server issue, is it intended? I couldn't think of any reason as to why this would happen. I thought that if others have found it that the game would just shut down to fix it, but the game launched six hours ago and there has been no sign of anything about to take place.

"How do we leave then?" She asked.

"The only other way to leave the game is by having someone else take off the Nervegear. Once you put it on, your mind and your body are disconnected from each other and you can't move a single muscle in the real world." They grew more worried when I said that. Both of them looked like they were on the verge of panicking. I couldn't do that, I had to tell them something good. "The dev's are probably going to shut the server down and forcefully log us out in order to fix the bug." They looked a little more relax but not by much. Then, out of nowhere, we hear the loud dinging of a bell. It's ear splitting loud. I looked over to DJ and Nina who were covering their ears and trying to say something but I couldn't hear them over the sound of the bells. After a few rings, the ringing stopped and we had a few moments of quiet before we were teleported to the main plaza of the Town of Beginnings. It wasn't just us either. I think the whole player population is in the plaza right now. Nina and DJ came up close to me. Nina grabbed my arm rather tightly, I could tell she was nervous.

"What's going on?" DJ asked along with numerous others that's here right now.

"I wish I knew." Just when I said that a red bubble came around us all with a bunch of warnings on it. Then a thick, red liquid started seeping into the bubble. It started to form into a ball which then formed into a huge guy wearing a cape. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was the second coming. The person in the cape then spoke.

"Hello players. Welcome to the world of Sword Art Online. My name is Akihiko Kayaba, the lead developer of SAO. I wanted to explain a few things before you _truly_ start your journey in Aincrad." People in the crowd started panicking a bit, I don't blame them. The way Kayaba said truly sent a shiver down my spine. "First order of business, some of you have noticed a lack of a logout button from the menu. I can assure you that this is not a defect. I repeat, this is not a defect. This is the way SAO is to be played."

"What does he mean?" Nina asked me nervously.

"I don't know, but I think we're about to find out."

"Secondly, there is no longer a way to revive someone in SAO. If you die in SAO, the microwave safety feature in the Nervegear will cut off and the microwaves will fry your brain and end your life." Have you ever heard 10,000 people gasp at once? Well that's what happened when Kayaba said that if we die in the game we die in real life.

"That's not right." DJ said.

"If someone tries to remove the Nervegear from your head, the safety feature will still become disabled and fry your brain anyway. I issued a warning to everyone in the real world, however, some people didn't heed it, and as a result there are 20 less players in SAO." Kayaba really thought of the common fail safes for this plan of his, but why? Why is he doing this? It sounds so farfetched that people didn't even take him seriously. And yet this is really happening. "The only way to leave SAO is to clear all 100 floors of Aincrad. Only then will everyone be logged out of SAO." That's the only way to get back home to the real world. We have to clear all 100 floors of Aincrad. I don't mind doing this, putting myself in harm's way for the sake of others. I just don't want DJ or Nina to have to go through this. The more I think about it, the more I wished I didn't buy this game for them. No matter how you look at it, I put them in this situation. "I left a gift in your item boxes, if everyone would please check their storage." Right on cue there was a notification button flashing in front of me and everyone else. When I tapped it there was a confirmation screen that said accept gift. I hit the blue circle to accept and spawning in my hands is a mirror.

'What's this for?' I wondered. My question was answered as everyone in the plaza started glowing. At first I thought we were all about to die but then everyone reappeared looking different.

"Cousin!" DJ was looking at me with his eyes widened. My eyes grew too when I saw DJ in his real life body. His skin color, height, body type, even facial features were an exact mirror to his real life image. Coming up next to him was Nina and, just like DJ, she's also in her real life form. And, putting the icing on the cake, I looked into the mirror to see me in my real life form, including the nasty scar on my left eye. The Nervegear scans your face which explains how it knows all the small details of my face. And I'm pretty sure that it got my height and body type through the calibration test that it makes you do. Looking around it disgusted me how many guys dressed up as girls in this game. I find it nauseating.

"This concludes the opening of Sword Art Online. I wish you all good luck in clearing all the floors of Aincrad." With that, Kayaba faded away, and the bubble disappeared as well. For a few moments, everyone just stood there, shocked with what Kayaba just said. Everyone was just letting what he said sink in. Then, the panic began.

"I can't stay here!"

"You can't do this to us!"

"I got a wife and kids!"

"I need to go home!" Everyone just started scrambling around town.

"Guys come with me." I called to Nina and DJ. I didn't even let them follow me at their will, I grabbed both of their arms and guided them to an alley.

"What are we going to do cuz?" I couldn't even look him in the eye.

"It's my fault."

"Huh?"

"IT'S MY FAULT!" I yelled to them causing them both to jump. "If it wasn't for me none of you would have to be here. Now we're trapped in this death game with no way out and it's all my fault." Nina just came to hug me.

"Don't blame yourself. This was our decision and we don't regret it. If you were here all alone I would probably try to get the game just to join you. I can't stand not being with you." When she said that I couldn't help but shed a few tears.

"She's right cuz, I love spending time with you. If you were trapped in here, I would've done the same thing as Nina and got the game to be with you. I need you cousin." I knew that DJ looked at me as a brother but I didn't think it was like that. If there's a silver lining to this situation, it's that I'm trapped in a video game with my cousin and girlfriend. That's something I will always be grateful for. I wiped my eyes and broke the hug.

"Thank you guys it means a lot that you're here with me." They both shot me a smile.

"Well what are we going to do now?" DJ asked me.

"We need to level up if we want to help clear the game. We all are a level 5 right now, which is good, but if everyone in the game is trying to get a high level to clear it then we need to move fast or the rest of the fields will be cleared and the good quests will be taken."

"Ok so where to?" Nina asked.

"To the next town over. Most players don't know how to get there, but I was in the beta test so I know exactly how to get there. We'll run into some boars and wolves along the way, but as long as we fight together we can make it through just fine." They nodded at me and gave me an excited look. They were ready for the challenge. "We ready to go?"

"Oh yeah cuz."

"Ready when you are love." With our goal in mind we ran out towards the fields. When we ran into our first boar we fought with amazing coordination. I took the hits while DJ and Nina dealt the damage. That boar stood no chance against us. As long as we stick together as a family, we will survive.

 **There's the first chapter of Family Survives, we hope you enjoyed it. We will update this as fast as we can. It's hard to get together when we are in different states. Transportation isn't an issue for me but for her it is. My schedule isn't the best either. That's the beauty of co-op stories though. More people equals more ideas which leads to long chapters. Anyway until next chapter this is ragmanthemadman, and his companion, signing off.**


	2. Trap!

**Might as well do a two for one special if we're both here so let's get on with chapter 2.**

It's been a month since the launch of SAO. The death toll is estimated to be around 1,000. Luckily me and my family are still alive. We have been doing well so far, we all got some better gear and skills, and we've saved up a few thousand Col each. Overall, we weren't doing bad. Luckily, the inns in The Town of Beginnings are cheap, they're not that good either though. Today, we were going to do a quest that gave us some more Col. When we went to the quest giver someone else was there to try and do the quest.

"Hey, can we help with the quest.?" The person trying to take the quest turned around.

"I guess you…" He paused and looked at my name. Rag, Is that you? I was confused because I've never seen this guy before, but when I looked above his head I saw the name of my beta test partner.

"Kirito? Long time no see." I stuck my hand out for him to shake which he accepted.

"You got the game huh?"

"Yeah I did, I was able to pull some strings and get some for my family as well." I gestured to both my cousin and my girlfriend.

"Mind introducing me?"

"Oh yeah, this is DJ, my cousin, and this is Nina, my girlfriend."

"IRL (In real life)?"

"IRL."

"Nice. I'm Kirito, I played with Ragman in the beta test." He stuck out his hand. DJ was the first to shake it followed by Nina.

"You guys need some Col?"

"We're not in desperate need of it but if we're going to be stuck on the first floor for a while we might as well get as much Col as we can for the higher floors."

"You're right, smart way to go about it. Shall we go?"

"Yeah." I opened my menu to invite him to the party. He was already on my friends list from the beta so he was easy to find. He accepted the party request and he got a gander at our levels.

"5 for DJ, 5 for Nina and 6 for you rag? You guys have been busy huh?"

"Yeah, we grinded pretty hard on the first week. When there was nothing better to do on the first floor we just started doing odd jobs for money. It doesn't give gear or a lot of experience but it does give us some extra Col in our pockets, which is nice."

"Yes it is. I know I wouldn't complain. Let's get going before nightfall."

"Alright." We all got going to complete the quest. In order to do that we had to deliver some supplies to a group camp in the fields. We didn't ask for any details as to why this was important, we just wanted Col.

While on the way to the fields we ran into a few wolves, which were nothing with the teamwork we have. Then again, our levels were really high for someone on the first floor, so they would have been a cakewalk for anyone to handle solo. Still, it's only worth mentioning because it got us some more Col.

When we arrived at the camp there were no members outside the tents. Come to think of it, why would you want to be out of a safe zone for longer than a day. There was something off about this. I stepped up to the entrance of the tent.

"Hang back for now, something seems off about this place."

"You sense it too?" Kirito asked me.

"Yeah, if it gets hairy teleport back to The Town of Beginnings."

"I'm not leaving you behind." Kirito put his hand on my shoulder. Nina stepped up to me.

"You're not going to do something like this on your own. I'm with you."

"Same here cuz. We said we would survive this together." They all gave me a reassuring smile.

"Thanks guys." I went to the entrance of the tent and when I did I heard people gripping their sword and slightly pulling it out. I started to grip the front of it and quickly yanked the cover off to reveal two people just going through their inventory. They notice us there and get up to greet us.

"Hello. You guys have our supplies?" Their cursors were green so I knew that they weren't player killers. I was still a little hesitant around them though.

"Yes we do." Kirito opened his inventory to materialize the goods.

"Good, you can set those down in the tent." Kirito put the goods in the tent and we waited to get our reward.

"We were told we would get 500 Col for this." I asked them.

"Oh yeah, we forgot. Give me a minute to get it for you." He pulled out his menu trying to trick me into thinking he is starting a trade. After a month of being trapped in this game I know the icons of the menu by position. In order to trade you have to go to the friend's menu, which he did, but instead of going to the trade button he went to the message button.

"Who are you messaging." I wasn't dumb, I knew something was off about this.

"Just a friend who messaged me just now." He really thinks I'm stupid.

"I didn't see a message notification on your screen." He looked a bit panicky when I said that.

"Really I thought that I had…"

"Cut the bullcrap and answer the question. Who, are, you, messaging?" That only made him panic more. I didn't think I would be that intimidating. He just decided to give up and yell.

"Get them guys!" As soon as he said that four players with orange icons above their heads appeared and surrounded us.

"Player killers huh?" Kirito said whilst he drew his sword followed by Nina and DJ. I decided to try and talk them out of it. The last thing I want to happen is for them to die for a stupid reason.

"I don't think you want to do this guys. We don't want to hurt you."

"Shut up! We don't care what your intentions are. We just want your items and we'll be on our way." Judging by their gear, I'd say that they were between the levels of 10 and 15. This could be a problem if we have to fight. When you die in SAO your items become free pickings for everyone else. It's one of the things that's been changed since the beta.

"You're making a mistake, don't do this."

"I'm about to kill you if you open your mouth again." That made Nina shiver a bit. "I'll give you two choices, you give us your gear by trade or by death. Your choice."

"I choose C."

"Which is?"

"None of the above." With that I unsheathed my sword and got into my stance with my shield in front and my sword on the side.

"There was no choice C. you just chose DEATH!" The guy charged at me with a fury, swinging his sword at me multiple times. He tried to wear me down but I've been used to taking hits, it's my playstyle. The other three attacked Kirito, DJ, and Nina individually. The two greens just sat back and watched. They won't attack because they need to have green cursers for their plan to work. The guy kept attacking, draining his energy. He was starting to breathe heavily which is what I was waiting for. When his attacks slowed, I started to attack. I was slow, but I was powerful. All it takes is a few hits to kill my foe. As soon as I got a couple hits in and dropped his HP to yellow he started to back away.

"Had enough?"

"No, I'm just getting started." He brought his sword back to start a sword skill. No matter how high my defense is blocking a sword skill is always tricky. There is a piercing affect with most of them that cause me to take damage from them anyway. I had to try and stop his skill. I dropped my shield and attacked him once more. My sword sliced through the side of his abdomen displaying the digital red cut. His HP bar dropped to red. That's not the only thing that dropped either, he dropped to his knees and was breathing heavily. I started to walk away to help the others but he ran at me again with his sword making a lunging motion at me. His eyes showed me that he was desperate. He didn't want to lose that way. If he lost, he was going to completely lose. I had no choice, I blocked his attack with my shield and stabbed him in his side. His HP bar decreased to nothing as he was falling to the ground. When he did he just moaned a bit and exploded into the blue triangles.

"BOSS!" One of the grunts said. I guess the guy I just killed was the leader of the groups "Fall back guys, we can't win." The three people ran away along with the two people camping in the tent. The area was empty except for the bag that was dropped by the leader of the group. When the others left reality sank in.

"I killed him." I said rather softly. Nina came up behind me.

"You gonna be ok?" I just stood there with my sword in my hand. Reluctantly I inspected the weapon that was used to kill the leader.

"I killed him." That seemed to be the only thing I could say. Nina just hugged me from behind, when she did I dropped my sword and kneeled down.

"I'm confused." DJ spoke up. "If he killed him why is he still green?" I cringed when he said that and Nina felt it.

"DJ!"

"What? I'm curious. If I'm going to be here I need to learn as much as I can." Kirito answered him.

"When you attack someone with a green cursor outside of a duel you get an orange cursor. However, when you attack someone with an orange cursor, you don't get penalized."

"Does the cursor ever go back to green?"

"I think it's after three days of no issues. Don't quote me on it though, I don't have any experience with it so I can't say for certain." I can only hear their conversation; I'm not looking at their faces. I'm paying attention to the sword I used to kill. I was hoping I wouldn't have to kill anyone in this game but I just did, on the first floor too. We need to find the floor boss quick before this player killing gets out of hand. Nina tried to rub my back to make me feel better, but no matter how hard she tries I can't get over the fact that I killed someone.

"Thanks Nina but I can't let this go."

"Why not?"

"I killed him, there was no need for him to die. The worst part is I thought nothing of it as we were fighting. I was just acting on instinct." She hugged me tightly, pushing her chest into my back.

"I'm sorry you had to do that, but in a way you saved others from falling into that trap. It was like you were a cop who had to kill someone who would have killed multiple other people. This doesn't change how we think about you either. We understand that you did what you had to do and we still love you." DJ chimed in.

"She's right cuz. Don't let this bother you. It was the right thing to do." I really do love my family.

"Thanks guys. That makes me feel better." I picked up my sword and sheathed it. Kirito came up to me.

"I checked the bag. The guy had 1,000 Col in it. We could split it 250 Col each."

"That works for us." I looked to them for confirmation and they both nodded their heads. Kirito traded the Col to the three of us and we proceeded to head back to town.

When we arrived at town Kirito left the party.

"Sorry to leave so soon but I wanted to do another quest before I went to sleep." It was evening here but we've been trying to adjust to this time zone so we get tired earlier.

"No problem Kirito, just stay safe ok?" He turned to walk away and raised his hand.

"I'll try." We all went into a motel to get some sleep. We all went to our respective rooms. I tried to get ready to get some sleep but someone knocked on my door. Before I could even say 'come in' Nina opened the door while I was still in the middle of changing and she looked away as soon as she saw me.

"I'm sorry babe, I was just coming to check on you." Normally the door is locked for anyone who tries to enter, but I have my privacy set to friends only, meaning my friends can walk into my room if they want. I put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts to wear for bed.

"I'm decent, you can look now." She turned to see me clothed and I moved to sit on the bed. The room only had a bedroom and a bathroom. The bed was a queen but it wasn't exactly well made. It looked pretty old in general.

"Will you be ok?" One thing about Nina you should know about is that she literally can't live her life if I'm not ok. Must be because of what happened in our childhood. I love her for that though.

"It will be on my mind but it shouldn't affect me too much." She sat down next to me.

"I know you don't like to express how you feel. If you have something you need to say, you can always talk to me. You know that, right?" She knows me too well if you ask me.

"I know, you're always there for me even when I don't ask for it."

"Because when you don't ask for it, you need it the most." She's got me there.

"You're not wrong about that." I yawned after I said that. "I should probably get some sleep." She jumped up.

"Do you want some company?" Was she really implying that she wanted to sleep with me.

"You mean, sleep with me?" She blushed a bit.

"Yes, but nothing more." She pointed her finger at me to make sure I wouldn't try anything. I'm a guy, it's natural to have desires for a girl, especially if she is your girlfriend.

"Who said I would do _that_?"

"Better safe than sorry I say." She poked my head and I fell back on the bed. She giggled a bit. "Let me change fast and I'll come join you." She went to the bathroom which is pretty much the only place in this room that you can have privacy. I got comfortable on the bed and went into thought. I thought about what the future had in store for us. Is it good? Is it bad? That kind of thing. I don't care if I don't survive till the end. I do care if DJ and Nina survive. They mean more to me than anything and if they die here I will always think that it was my fault. The bathroom door opened and Nina walked out of the bathroom and went next to the bed. She was wearing a nightgown which showed the top of her chest. I tried not to look but my eyes were drawn to their gravitational pull.

'Nice.' I thought to myself.

"I said nothing more than just sleeping next to you." She put her hands over her chest, stopping my gaze.

"Sorry, you're just so beautiful that I can't help but stare at times. I find it funny how I've known you for so long and every time I look at you I can't get over how beautiful you are." She blushed a bit and chuckled.

"Flattery won't get you what you want."

"Who said that's what I was trying to get?" She hit my shoulder and we both laughed for a bit. I slid over to allow her some room and she hoped into the bed next to me. Just so she knows I'm not trying to do anything I gave her a good seventy percent of the bed. This was not to her liking.

"You can cuddle next to me if you want." She said not looking at me. I slid closer to her and I put my arm around her belly. It felt comforting to have her by my side. It was like I could sleep soundly through the night no matter what goes on around me. I kissed Nina on the cheek.

"I love you Nina."

"I love you too Max."

 **There's chapter two. Hopefully the first two chapters will be a good start for the story and we can add to it more. Anyway, until next time this is ragmanthemadman and companion, signing off.**


	3. Value of a life

**Hey guys, sorry we are late with this but here is the next chapter in the story we hope you enjoy it.**

A couple weeks passed since that trap. Ever since that happened we've been a lot more careful with quest that we take from other players. As a matter of fact, we stopped doing delivery quests entirely and just do monster hunts. It was early in the morning and we were eating breakfast when I noticed that something was wrong with my cousin.

"What's wrong DJ?" Over the past week he looked down and a little out of it. Not a lot of things can have that effect on him.

"Nothing cuz."

"DJ, I've known you long enough to know when you are feeling down. Tell me what's wrong." He looked at me, then at Nina and sighed.

"I guess that I'm losing my motivation to live life in this game anymore." I wasn't sure what he meant by that.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I don't enjoy my time here like you guys do anymore. You two are couples in this game and in real life, but I don't have anyone like that."

"I get it. You want someone else to love besides us." He nodded.

"You two are like family, It's like I'm obligated to love you guys. I want someone else who loves me because they like who I am and not because they're family." When he said that he looked like he was on the verge of shedding tears. At this point players are starting to lose hope at going home. Some just live their life here, others go to the front lines to get out of SAO, and others… don't live at all. I'm not implying that they commit suicide, although it has happened, but they just sit here and do nothing. I don't want that to happen to my cousin.

"Hey DJ, why don't we go hunt some monsters. You love when we do that." I got a little smile out of him which was good enough for me.

"Yeah I do."

"Atta boy. We'll go after breakfast." We finished our food and got our equipment ready to head out. Nina stopped me before I went out the inn.

"You think this will cheer him up?"

"I think it will. Combat makes him forget about a lot of things."

"What's wrong with him exactly? You were talking to him like you got what he meant and you understood but I still don't fully get it." I held her hand.

"He misses his family."

"And I don't?"

"That's not what I'm saying, he can't cope with it because he doesn't care about someone here like he does in the real world. I'm not saying he doesn't care about us, but he does care more about his family in the real world."

"I see."

"I can cope because I don't have much of a family in the real world anyway, and you're here. You can cope because I'm here. DJ doesn't have anyone so he can't cope as well." She nodded in realization as she finally understood why DJ was feeling so blue.

"I get it now, should we help him find someone." That's where we ran into complications.

"The thing is, there aren't a lot of female players here let alone some that he likes and who likes him back."

"What's the mismatch?"

"There's about three guys to one girl if I remember correctly."

"Part of me is not surprised by these numbers."

"We just need to make sure that we can take his mind off of it. I would love to find him someone that he loves but it's hard to do now. All we can do is try to take his mind off of it." She nodded in understanding.

"Well let's head out then." We all met up in front of the inn and went out to the fields to hunt some wolves. Nothing too strong but they will entertain us. We were just fighting normally with us taking on one wolf each. When I killed my wolf I noticed that DJ was just staring into space as a wolf came to attack him.

"DJ!" I screamed as I rushed over to push him out of the way. I tackled him out of the way while getting grazed in the side by the wolf in the process. My HP took a small hit but nothing serious. Nina finished her wolf and engaged DJ's while I gave him a quick word. "I know these wolves aren't that strong but you still can't get distracted like that. All it takes is a few good hits to kill you." I got off of him and helped him up.

"Maybe that's the only way out of here." I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"DJ, don't tell me you're thinking about committing suicide." He looked at the ground and turned away from me.

"I need to be alone for a while." He walked away from me, and I was about to follow him until Nina grabbed me.

"You used to be like that too you know. Just give him some time for now." I broke from her grasp and responded rather harshly.

"What if something happens? I can't just let him be alone knowing that he might kill himself. I wouldn't forgive myself."

"He's still in the party, so if something happens we'll see it. So don't blame yourself, he did this on his own accord."

"I know, but I'm the one that brought him here in the first place. If he died here, then it would be because I brought him here." She gave me a hug from behind pushing her chest against my back.

"We already said that we wouldn't want it any other way, stop blaming yourself for this." I hung my head.

"I can't" I was on the verge of tears but being held by Nina made the tears go back where they came from.

"Let's go grab some lunch, ok?" She gave me a kiss on my neck.

"Alright." We started to head back to town, but I couldn't get my mind off of DJ.

'Don't kill yourself cuz. I need you more than you know.'

[DJ's POV]

I was walking for a few minutes looking down at the ground, which is not recommended out on the fields. I've just been feeling so down lately, I wish I had someone to help snap me out of it like Nina does to my cousin. I'm envious of their relationship. I wish that I could have a relationship like that. Unfortunately, I overheard that there are a lot less females than males in this game. The odds of me finding someone to be in a relationship with in this game are very slim.

"AAHHH!" I snapped to attention as I heard someone scream. It seemed close by so I took off running in the direction it came from. "HELP ME PLEASE!" The voice sounded female which made me run even faster. I ran until I hit a small forest and saw a female sitting against a tree with a knife held in front of her face in fear. Facing her was a high level hornet that you have to kill for a quest. Normally, you would face this monster with at least a partner, but by yourself it's really difficult. Luckily, I've faced it before so I know what attack patterns it has. Right now he's changing his style because someone else came into the battle.

"Hey I'm here to help." I said to her as I held my hand out to help her. She was hesitant, and for good reason, but now wasn't the time for that. "C'mon! We don't have long before he attacks again." She made up her mind with that and she took my hand. I helped her up and I tried to get away but the hornet blocked me. It's an extremely aggressive monster. "Damn it." I looked at the girl who had a look of extreme fear in her eyes. "Don't get scared, I can get us out of this." The monster's weak spot was its wings. If I could cut them I could buy enough time to get away. Unfortunately for me, this monster spawns workers to fight alongside it. They're weak but can overwhelm in numbers. As long as I run fast enough though I should be able to get away. I look at the monster and quickly swung my sword at his wing. It screeched in pain and fluttered as hard as it could to stay up in the air. This was our chance to escape. "Follow me." We ran as fast as we could toward the end of the forest. That was our intention at least, the workers came in faster than I thought. I had to change course which led us deeper into the forest. It didn't take long for me to get lost. A hornet blindsided me and stung me in my arm. I quickly cut him down and tried to find a place to hide.

"Follow me, I know a place to hide." The girl said as she grabbed me and ran to a small overhead camouflaged by leaves. She moved the leaves out of the way and I followed her in. it wasn't the best camouflage, but It was good enough to hide from the hornets. Whoever this girl was, I went from saving her life to her saving mine. "Thank you for saving me back there."

"The feeling is mutual, you helped me a lot back the… NGH." I winced as I felt a sharp pain in my gut. I looked at my status bar to see green bubbles next to my name. I was poisoned.

"Are you ok." She asked in a not so very quiet tone.

"Keep it down, we're hidden now but if we make too much noise the monsters will come after us." She hushed up a bit afterwards and looked down at the ground. That made me feel bad for scolding her. "Sorry, I know you're just being helpful. I got poisoned when that hornet stung me. I didn't feel the effects until now though."

"Do you have an antidote?" I opened my inventory to check, and just my luck, I didn't have one. I shook my head. "Me neither. What'll happen to you?"

"Don't worry, it will wear off over time." Unfortunately, because I was stung by a bee spawned by the high level hornet, it takes a while to wear off.

"I'm sorry, you got stung because of me."

"Don't apologize, I wanted to save you."

"Doesn't it scare you though?" I sighed.

"I've been here for a month and a half. If I'm scared of fighting, I will never survive this place." She looked at me with slight admiration.

*beep-beep*

A message came in for me from my cousin. I almost forgot that I was still in a party with them so they can see my health and status. When I opened the message it read…

 _Cousin I noticed that your poisoned and your health is decreasing, are you ok?_

That's my cousin, always looking out for those he loves. I responded to him.

 _I got stung by a hornet. I'm with someone right now keeping me company while it wears off. We could use some help getting out of the forest though._

I sent off the message and the girl looked at me. "Who's that?"

"My cousin, he's hopefully going to help us out of this." A message came in that reinforced what I said.

 _Give us a half-hour_

"What did he say?"

"Give him a half-hour and he'll get us out of this." She sighed a bit at that.

"Thank goodness, I just want to go back to the inn."

"Why did you go after that monster on your own?" She looked down.

"I wanted to try and get stronger, and the quest gives a good knife." I knew that, but unfortunately you only get one, so we gave it to Nina. I'd rather keep a sword for now. "When we were first told that we were trapped here I couldn't bring myself to fight for a while. I was so scared to die that I didn't want to do anything but wait it out. Then I realized how much I miss my family and how much they must miss me and I decided to join in the fight. I may not be good at it like you but I'm trying."

"That's all anyone can do at the moment." I felt myself becoming hot and tired due to the poison. It doesn't just affect HP like other games, it affects your actual health as well.

"You don't look so good." She put her hand on my forehead. "You're getting warm too."

"Yeah… I just… need…" I felt myself starting to fall asleep but I was jolted up when the girl surprised me with a hug.

"Don't fall asleep on me, I need you." This caught me off guard. I was trying to find someone to care about here and this girl is certainly winning in that category.

"I'll do my best." We waited for about twenty minutes with me fighting sleep and the girl keeping me awake until my cousin came. I knew he was here because I heard hornets exploding into triangles.

"DJ where are you?" I couldn't move much so the girl got up and moved the leaves to reveal our location.

"We're in here." I looked out and saw my cousin and Nina. My cousin came in to help me with an antidote crystal.

"Heal." He said which made the crystal burst and cure my poison.

"Thanks cousin."

"No problem." He put his hand on my shoulder. "I'll always have your back cousin." He had a look that seemed to say 'and I truly mean what I said'. Not that I thought he said that just to say it but that just reinforced that he will always be there for me. He looked behind him and noticed the girl that was helping me earlier. "Who's your friend?" When he said that it reminded me that I never got the girl's name.

"I never asked for her name, but she did help me get away from the hornets." She seemed to be a bit shy from the new faces that came in. "It's alright, these are the guys that I was talking to earlier." That seemed to make her feel a little better.

"Silica, my name is Silica." I thought it was a beautiful name but it wasn't the time to be thinking that. We had to get out of the forest and back into a safe zone before the high level hornet finds us.

"Thanks for keeping my cousin safe Silica, I owe you." She smiled at his compliment. Nina yelled at us.

"Hey I'm glad DJ's ok and everything, but can we get a move on before we get swarmed." (See what we did there?)

"Yeah we're coming." My cousin looked at me. "Can you fight?" I stood up and was still a bit weak kneed from the poison. It was going to be hard to run, let alone fight.

"I can try." Silica stepped between me and my cousin.

"I'll fight for him if need be." That was a pretty bold statement from her considering that I found her in a corner on the verge of getting killed. My cousin just nodded his head.

"Ok, keep him safe." She nodded.

"I'll do my best." It looked like my cousin wanted something more definitive than 'I'll do my best' but we were pressed for time so he didn't seem to mind at the moment.

We got out of our hiding spot and started to make our way out of the forest to the nearest safe zone. It would take some time so Silica tried to make conversation.

"How did you find us? Normally, you can't find players locations if they're not in safe zones."

"You're partly right. The only way you can find people outside of a safe zone is if you have a good tracking skill. Nina and I both have good enough tracking skills to find DJ at least." My cousin explained to Silica who seemed impressed at how much my cousin knew about the game.

"Wow, I never knew that about the game."

"Yeah, there's not only stats for combat but stats for things you do on a daily basis like cooking." Of course he would mention that. He loves cooking in this game.

"It's quite impressive really." She's right, it is.

"What level are you Silica?" It took a second for her to answer. Like she didn't really want to tell us.

"level 5." She said rather softly.

"And you faced that high level hornet by yourself? That's pretty ballsy. Me and the others could barely kill him by ourselves, and we were level 6." That's not entirely true. I was a level 6, Nina and my cousin was 7 at the time.

"I know it wasn't a good idea but I want to be on the front lines clearing the game and I can't do that with a low level."

"Getting yourself killed won't help either." That one sentence silenced everyone. Silica looked distraught at what he just said. As if what he said reminded her of something bad.

"you're right, it won't… maybe I shouldn't help at all then." My cousin seemed to have caught what he said and tried to explain.

"That came out wrong. What I meant was…" he couldn't finish his sentence as the high level hornet came out of nowhere and practically blindsided us.

"You didn't kill it?" I yelled to my cousin.

"We didn't see it, we assumed it took off somewhere." It flew over us with a menacing look. "No running away from this one, we have to fight." My cousin drew his sword and Nina followed with her dagger. I drew my sword to try and attack as well, but I still felt weak and couldn't hold my own as I could. My cousin knew this.

"DJ stand back. You're still not a hundred percent from the poison and I won't have you getting killed on my watch." I hate to admit that he was right but he was. There was no way I could fight in my condition. If I fought I would probably be killed. "Just leave this to us, we beat it before, we can do it again." I nodded and went next to Silica who was still in shock after what my cousin said. I wanted to try and help snap her out of it but I'm not quite sure how to.

The fight was dragging on longer than expected. Last time we fought this thing it wasn't easy and it took us a while, but we learned it's attack patterns and weaknesses, or at least we thought we learned it. Now it seems to have a different attack pattern that is hard to pin down. It's possible that the monsters in this game adapts to other players' styles of attack and changes their attack styles accordingly. Nina and my cousin wasn't expecting this and were having a hard time fighting the hornet. If things went on like they are right now, they could be killed.

"This thing got an upgrade from the last time we fought it." Nina said. The stinger on the hornet started glowing, which means that it's charging a skill, and it was aimed at Nina. The hornet charged for her and Nina just finished a skill of her own and couldn't dodge it.

"NINA!" My cousin yelled as he ran in front of her to try and block the attack with his shield, which he did but the stinger only scraped the edge of his shield and hit him in the shoulder. Luckily, my cousin has a high health pool and survived with his HP only at yellow, but the attack had a side effect of poison. Nina tried to treat his wounds but that left her vulnerable to the hornet who was recovering from his attack. They needed help, and the only person who could provide it was Silica.

"Silica, I know that you're afraid to fight but can you please help them out?" She shook her head slowly.

"Why fight if I'll just die for trying? Maybe I should just wait the game out, or rather just end it all together." I knew what she meant by that. I was heading down that path too.

"You misunderstood what he said. He's not saying that fighting will get you killed, he's saying that you should be careful when you do fight." She looked at me for a second.

"You're saying that he was trying to look out for me? That he wants to make sure that I don't die?" I nodded.

"Yes, that's exactly what I meant. I just have a hard time explaining it is all." Silica seemed to have snapped out of it when he said that. She drew her dagger but couldn't keep her hand still. I put my hand on her shoulder.

"It's ok to be scared, but don't let it consume you. You've fought before, right?" She nodded. "Then this is just another fight for you. Just stick to what you know and you will be fine." She took a deep breath and got serious. Perfect timing too because the hornet recovered from its attack and went to finish my cousin and Nina off. Nina braced herself for the hit but it never came as Silica used her dagger to cut the wing of the hornet, causing it to go off course and hit the ground next to them. The hornet's HP dropped to yellow on the brink of red.

"Time to finish this." Silica said as her dagger started to glow. She quickly swung and hit the hornet in the side followed by another swing which was so strong it caused her to do a full 360 spin. Nina pulled off this move a few times before so I know that this is the Side Bite skill, and it was enough to finish the hornet alright as its HP hit zero and burst into triangles. Silica leveled up from the hornet's defeat and in the process completed her quest. Nina healed my cousin of his poison during the fight as well.

"That was great Silica." I exclaimed.

"Yeah, those were good moves that you did there Silica and it saved our lives. Looks like I owe you twice." My cousin said.

"You don't owe me anything. I actually owe you for helping me find confidence to fight."

"Why don't you two just call it even?" I said. They just shrugged and chuckled a bit.

"The safe zone isn't that much further from here." My cousin said, and he was right. The town was just a few minutes away. We walked into the safe zone and Silica went to find the quest giver that gave her the quest. I decided to follow her, hoping that I could get her to become my friend, and possibly more. Nina and my cousin went to the inn to try and rest. I was able to catch up to her and ask her a question.

"Silica!" She turned to look at me. "Could you be my friend?" She chuckled a bit at my request.

"You didn't need to ask me, of course I'll become your friend." I sent a request to her right away and she gladly accepted it.

"Did you want to hang out with us for a while longer?" She shook her head.

"Sorry, but I want to become stronger so I can really help you guys out."

"You're strong enough to help us out, you proved that today." She shook her head harder this time.

"That was only because you showed me the monster's weakness and not only that, your family weakened him, I just finished him off. It was fun, goodbye for now DJ." I grabbed her arm.

"Don't get yourself into anymore situations like the one I found you in, and if you find yourself in that situation don't hesitate to call me." She turned to look at me.

"Thank you for caring for me like that DJ. I won't forget that I have you to call on when I'm in need." She surprised me with a kiss on the cheek and walked away from me. Hands down the best day I've had in this game so far.

I went back to the inn to find my family and they were sitting in my cousin's room just having a chat.

"How did it go cousin?"

"It went well." I responded blushing a little as I remembered the kiss that she gave me.

"Judging by your red cheeks, I'm guessing that you got a 'thank you' for helping her out." Nina said making her finger quotes when she said thank you.

"Yeah, I did." I normally would be embarrassed by something like this but I didn't really care right now. It was a long day and I just wanted to go get some rest and let my body recover from the stress of today.

"I'm going to get some sleep; it was a long day."

"We're not far behind you. Good night cuz"

"G'night"

[Max's POV]

DJ walked out of the room, leaving me and Nina alone.

"Don't I get a thank you too?" She asked me. I gave her a kiss on her forehead.

"Thank you for the many things you have done." I was referring to the things she's done before SAO as well as her saving my life today.

"It's no problem really. I know it was hard for you after you lost your parents." If it was anyone else who brought that up I would have ended the conversation on the spot but she was an exception.

"Yeah it was rough for those first few years."

"That's why you were so passionate about DJ, because you went down the same path." It's true I thought about suicide many times when my parents died. Nina helped me out of that depression that I was in. Well, her and my cousin were the two who helped out the most.

"Yeah. I knew how it felt to be that down. It hurts to live life every day and to try and hide it from others with a smile. I didn't want him to feel the same way that I did. No one should have to go through that." Nina rubbed my back with her hand, something I find very soothing.

"You're right that no one should have to go through that." I felt my eyes getting heavier with each stroke on my back and Nina noticed.

"C'mon, let's get to bed." She got up and went to the bathroom to change, while I just got changed quickly in the main room. She came out a few minutes later in her rather revealing nightgown and laid in the bed. I stared at her for a minute and she stopped my glance by putting the covers over her.

"You joining me or not?" She said while patting the space next to her. I hopped in bed and put my arm around her and felt myself drifting off to sleep rather quickly. Before I fell asleep though, I felt a slightly wet pair of lips come in contact with my hand, Nina's way of saying 'I love you, goodnight.'

 **There's the chapter guys we hope you enjoyed. We made a slight mistake in chapter one and made DJ older than we intended him to be so his age was 15 but it's been corrected to 13. Anyways, until next time this is ragmanthemadman and companion signing off.**


	4. Beater

**Hey guys! We know the story is a little slow but as soon as the chapter is over it will become faster than it is now. In other news, my girlfriend will be doing most of the work on the story for a couple months because I am doing a spring sport and don't have as much time to write as I used to. I'll still have some input but most of the ideas will come from her until I get more time to write again. Anyways, we hope you enjoy this chapter.**

[Max's POV]

It's officially been two months since SAO launched and already roughly 2,000 people have died. That's a fifth of the total people who started the game dead already. It's not looking good to clear this floor let alone the game. Over the two months all of us have gotten used to living here. We all are a decent level now and we have the best equipment that you can get on the first floor. Since we have had some time to get used to some of the weapons in the game we all have a pretty good idea of where we want to go with our characters. I want to be a tank with high attack and defense, but not very fast. One handed sword and shield is what I'm going to try and max out. Nina wants to be like a ninja, extremely fast but pretty fragile. She's going to work with daggers. DJ wants to be the average Joe, capable of being decent at everything. He wants to use one handed swords but he may mess around with other weapons for a bit. Today, the higher level players are holding a meeting on how to attack the first floor boss. Of course, we're going to attend that meeting. We want this game cleared as much as any other person. We waited at a stage for someone named Diavel to take charge of the meeting.

"Hello everyone! My names Diavel, and the job I chose is knight." Everyone broke out in some form of laughter after that.

"There's no class system in this game!" Someone Diavel just smiled at the crowd and waited for them to settle. When they did, he continued.

"I called this meeting to let everyone know that the boss has been found. We are going to assault it tomorrow morning but before that, I want everyone to make a party right now." Some people started to scramble for partners while others just looked to their friends next to them. I was the one that just looked to my left and to my right to see my family who will have my back in this party.

"You guys have my back, right?" Nina gave me a playful punch on the shoulder.

"Do you even have to ask?" I chuckled a bit.

"I guess not."

"HOLD ON A MINUTE!" Someone yelled out. I looked behind me to see someone run down the aisle to the stage. "The beta testers left us beginners to die." He wasted no time with his opening statement. And what he said had me intrigued. "Think about it, the beta testers played the game before. They know where all the quests are, the best spots to farm, the best gear, the best skills to invest in, and yet, none of them have helped us learn the game. They kept all the good information for themselves." This statement got the crowd murmuring to themselves and me thinking. I only shared my knowledge of the game with my family and Silica. I didn't really share my knowledge with anyone else. Then again, we did try to take on odd jobs for other players, sometimes it's as little as helping them level up. It might not be giving out information but it's not like I kept my strength to myself. Should I still be considered a bad person in spite of that? I could see Nina and DJ looking at me out of my peripheral vision. They knew I was a part of the beta test so they are probably wondering how I'm taking this accusation, and if I was speaking for myself, I'd say he's wrong. Then again, I don't know what other beta testers are doing.

"Hold on a minute!" someone else called out. I looked behind me to see an adult, African American male walk down the aisle to the stage. I actually recognize him. That was Agil, someone who gave us things to do for other players. He was like a quest giver for us. He walked up to the stage and pulled out a book. "Do you know what this is?"

"No I don't."

"It's a beginner's manual that was made for this game."

"I never got one."

"Really? Well they were being given out to anyone who wanted one, and guess who was giving them out." He shrugged. "The beta testers. All the info they got from the beta is in this manual." Agil then turned to the crowd. "How many of you guys go this manual?" A good majority of players raised their hands.

"What's your point?"

"My point is the beta testers did what they could to make sure that everyone had a head start. Everyone had an opportunity to get this and if you missed out, that's on you." That seemed to shut him up. Diavel then regained control of the situation.

"Now that we have our parties, let's spend the day to get to know them and to form strategies as well as relax. Tomorrow at noon we will head out to face the boss." When he finished what he had to say he went off the stage. Everyone who had a party already left and those who stayed were looking for others who didn't have a party. My party left with everyone else who had parties and we went to the town square to figure out what to do next.

"Now what?" DJ asked. "He said to get to know your party but I don't think we've disbanded since we first got in the game. I couldn't know you guys better." He's not wrong, we have been in the same party since the beginning. And we have been fighting together for so long that we know what we are capable of and what we tend to do in battle. It seems like the only option left is to just chill.

"Just relax I guess." He wasn't satisfied with my answer.

"Yeah but we do everything together, maybe it's time to take a break from each other." Nina seemed to perk up when she heard that, but I didn't think anything of it.

"Hey guys!" We heard someone say out in the distance. It was Silica coming towards us.

"Hey Silica." Nina and I said. DJ was just looking at her.

"Um… hi Silica." He said rather nervously.

"I heard that some people are going to raid the boss tomorrow."

"You heard right." I said.

"So are you guys going to participate?"

"Yes we are. Are you?" She shook her head.

"I'm still not at your guys' level. What are you guys doing to prepare for tomorrow?"

"We're just going to relax to make sure we have our full strength for the fight tomorrow."

"I get it. What do you plan to do?"

"We actually haven…"

"We're going on a date." Nina said cutting me off. Silica and DJ looked at us.

"We are?" I said.

"Yes we are. We haven't had an actual date since we got here. And if we're going to be here for a while I still want to have some form of a normal life behind all of this." I can understand where she's coming from. We haven't had a real date for a while. It would be nice to have one. Even though it probably won't be as normal as in the real world.

"I guess me and Nina are going to have a date."

"What about me?" DJ asked. He's clueless right now so I'll just nudge him in the right direction.

"Why don't you and Silica hang out?" I saw them both blush a shade of deep red.

"We're not dating!" Silica said. They're taking this the wrong way.

"I never said go out on a date. Why not grab a bite to eat? It is close to lunch and it's not really a date unless you make it one."

"But I'm not very hungry." Silica said, but just as she finished a low rumbling sound can be heard followed by her rubbing her belly a bit. "Ok maybe I am a little."

"Have some fun with it. Tell jokes, play some cards. It's not a date unless you make it one." They nodded in understanding.

"Ok. Any recommendations?" DJ asked.

"How about that player run restaurant on this floor. I think it's called Divine or something like that." Silica propped up.

"Isn't that place pretty expensive for a first floor restaurant?" I shook my head.

"While it's true that it is more on the expensive side it's also the only restaurant on this floor with decent food, and we have a lot of col so don't worry about how much it is. I'm sure that DJ alone has enough to cover it." DJ nodded his head with a bit of a grin. Probably thinks highly of himself for having a lot of col.

"Ok then. Shall we go DJ?"

"Ready whenever." He said. Silica walked ahead with eagerness as she really wanted to get some food. DJ jogged a bit to try and catch up to her. They eventually left me and Nina's line of sight.

"Now that that's out the way, what did you plan on doing for a date?" I asked her. She immediately opens her inventory to pull out a picnic basket.

"I was hoping to have a picnic." I was surprised to see her prepared for that.

"I'm all for it."

"Good, I'll even let you pick the spot." I thought about it for a minute. I did remember a place I saw when I was doing a solo mission. It's not in a safe zone but I'm sure we can make it work.

"I know the perfect place. We'll have to work to get there though."

"I don't mind it. Lead the way." We walked out of town towards a big tree surrounded by a meadow. There was a strong enemy guarding the area though. A big bee to be exact. It won't be too hard for us to deal with though. I've beat it before and the bee is well below our level.

"Allow me to handle this." I told Nina as I drew my sword and initiated my attack. I quickly swung at the wing to paralyze the bee and take a large chunk of its health. I then finished it with a vertical slice down the center of it. The bee screeched as I made my mark with a digital red line. The health bar was decreasing steadily until it ran out of room to decrease and it gave a flat lining beep. The Bee's body glowed blue and then exploded into triangles. I was met with a nice victory screen afterwards giving me experience, col, and some honey. I was really hoping that it would drop some and thankfully it did.

"You do nice work."

"I try." I guided her to the tree so that we can set up. "The bee won't spawn for several hours so we should be able to stay as long as we want."

"Good to know." She said as she brought out the items for our picnic. One by one she touched the items on her item list and they appeared on the ground. The last item that appeared was the picnic basket which spawned in her hands. "Hope you're hungry." She said with a smile.

"We didn't have much of a breakfast so some food would be nice right now." She placed the picnic basket in the middle of the blanket she spawned earlier. She opened it to reveal some sandwiches. Just by looking I could tell it was made with boar meat. It's not the best food you can get but it is food. Luckily, I have a little something that should help it taste better.

"Sorry I couldn't find anything better than boar's meat to make the sandwiches with. I tried to make it taste good but you know I'm just starting out with cooking so It might not be the best tasting food." She said looking down at her fidgeting hands. She started trying to cook but like many other things in this game it's based on experience. Experience that takes a long time to build up.

"Don't worry about it. There is another reason why I chose this place other than the scenery." I opened my inventory to pull out the honey I got from the bee I fought earlier.

"Is that honey?"

"Yup." I put some on my sandwich. "Want to try some?" She nodded and held out her sandwich for me to put some honey on. When I did, the vial that the honey came in disappeared. That's what happens when you use all of its contents. Nina bit into the sandwich and her eyes immediately lit up when she bit down.

"WOW! This is amazing!" She said while chewing on her sandwich. I chuckled and proceeded to eat my sandwich. Normally, boar meat is tough and not very flavorful. The honey doesn't make it less tough but it does give it a good amount of flavor. "Did you get this from the bee?" I nodded and took another bite of my sandwich. "It's amazing. You really know how to impress me?" I felt a warmth rush to my cheeks when she said that.

We finish our sandwiches and lay down on the blanket next to the tree. Nina decided to take a short half hour nap while I stayed awake next to her. It's not a good idea to sleep outside of a safe zone, especially if you're next to a high level enemy spawn. After her little nap she decided to start a conversation.

"You never really explained how you met Kirito." I'm surprised she remembered him.

"Not much to tell about how we met."

"Not much to tell? All you said was that both of you were adamant solo players who found common ground. What exactly is that common ground?" I sighed. This isn't a subject I like to talk about.

"When I was in the middle of fighting a floor boss, I was in over my head. The boss was bigger, stronger, and had a complex AI. I thought I was done for until Kirito came in and stunned the monster long enough for me to heal. With his help, we finished off the floor boss. We both impressed each other so we partied up until the end of the beta. That's pretty much it." My story wasn't enough to satisfy her.

"You never told me what the common ground was that you two had." This is more or less the part I don't like to talk about.

"We were relaxing and figuring out more about each other. When I mentioned his parents, he immediately had a mood change. We were having a good time and he was happy but then I brought up his parents and his mood changed to sad and depressed." I swallowed before I continued. "He told me that he lost his parents in a car accident." Nina gasped when I said that.

"That's terrible." I nodded.

"Yeah it is." That's the common ground that me and Kirito have. We both lost our parents. His to a car accident and mine to a robbery gone wrong. Of course I didn't tell Kirito that. Only me, Nina, my cousin, and some other family members know what exactly happened to them. It's not the easiest thing in the world to talk about and Nina knows this. She turned to me and kissed my cheek.

"Sorry for making you talk about that. I know it's a touchy subject." It is a touchy subject, but Nina is so sensitive about it that I don't mind talking to her.

"It's ok. I don't mind talking to you about it." I looked at the time at the corner of my HUD. "We'd better go before a certain bee spawns in again." Nina nodded and put everything back in her inventory. After she did that we went back to the inn we're staying at to rest for tomorrow.

[The next morning]

It was time to face the floor boss. Nina and I went to the town center to wait for Diavel to lead us to the labyrinth. It was almost noon and DJ wasn't here.

"Have you seen DJ?" I asked Nina.

"No, I haven't seen him since yesterday." Me and Nina did turn in a little early. It's possible DJ got back to the inn after we went to sleep. Right on cue, DJ comes running next to us with Silica next to him.

"Well where were you two last night?" I asked them.

"We ended up playing some poker with some other players for fun." I regret teaching my cousin poker. He's been playing it a lot and is practically a genius at it. This also explains why he was out so late. Once he starts playing it's hard for him to stop.

"You played poker all night!" I said to him rather sternly. He cringed a bit.

"Yeah I did." He put his head down. Silica decided to step in.

"We went to an inn for dinner and he got into a game fairly quickly. I went upstairs to get some sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to find him sleeping at the table. So I brought him up to my room so he could sleep more comfortably." Wow. Silica really looked out for him.

"I hope he wasn't too much trouble."

"Not at all. I actually had a really good time with him." She blushed a little when she said that.

"As long as he wasn't too much trouble and he got enough rest for the boss fight today."

"Oh yeah, I'm ready to go cousin." He turned to Silica. "Thanks for all you've done Silica. I owe you one." She responded by giving him a hug.

"Consider us even from saving my life. Just make sure you come back alive." DJ nodded.

"I will." Diavel came in as soon as DJ and Silica finished their goodbye's.

"Alright everyone, let's head to the labyrinth." Diavel said as he primed the teleporter to take us there. Everyone who was going got on the teleporter. A crowd gathered around us to wish us all good luck. "Teleport, labyrinth." A flash of white light appeared in front of my face as everyone was instantly teleported to the first floor of the labyrinth. Diavel told us to work our way up to the top floor, and that the monsters shouldn't be difficult to defeat if the whole group fights together. He was right too. The monsters were a cakewalk leading up to the boss room. Eventually though we did reach the boss room. "Alright everyone, let's do this!" He said as he pushed the door open and ran into the room with everyone else following suit. When everyone was in the room the boss got his sword ready for his attack and minions started spawning in.

"Watch each other's back you guys." I told them. They nodded and charged into the battle. Our groups job was to take up arms wherever needed. Right now, our group needed to take out any minions the boss spawns. Diavel barked orders to everyone throughout the entire fight. He called other squads in to fight the main boss when others needed a break. He didn't call on us once so we only had minions to deal with. To be honest, it was pretty boring. I kept glancing over to the boss to see how the fight was going. The boss was on its last bar of health and no one died yet. So far so good. Right on cue the boss tosses its sword and starts to pull out another to replace it.

"Everyone stay back. I got this." Diavel said as he went in to finish off the boss. However, the boss didn't pull out the Talwar that the beginners book said it would. The boss actually pulled out a Nodachi which is stronger than the Talwar he used during the closed beta. Akihiko Kayaba must have changed the equipment of some of the bosses in game. Diavel wouldn't stand a chance against the boss now.

"Diavel stop your attack!" That voice sounded like Kirito's I looked around and spotted him with a hooded figure. Who was under the hood was anyone's guess. Kirito's warning came too late however as the boss unleashed a devastating attack on Diavel. His body was launched back to the doors leading into the room. A big red cut covered the front of his body. Kirito fell back to try and help him. He tried to give him a healing crystal but it looked like Diavel rejected it. He said something to Kirito that I can't make out and his body explodes into blue triangles. Kirito looms over where Diavel died for a few seconds before facing the boss with more determination than ever. He drew his sword and motioned for his partner to follow his lead. They both attacked the boss with synchronized attacks. Making the boss stumble and lose health at a steady pace. The boss fights through his virtual pain however and tries to attack Kirito's partner. "Watch out Asuna!" He yelled to his partner who just finished an attack and it looked like he wouldn't get out the way in time. Actually, _she_ barely got away from the attack but her cloak was ripped off of her in the process. So Asuna is her name. She continued to fight alongside Kirito until Kirito let loose with one last combo to finish off the boss. The raid party was celebrated the victory. Most of them celebrated at least. The one that accused the beta testers of withholding information yesterday spoke up.

"Don't forget that Diavel died." The group stopped celebrating. "You there." He pointed at Kirito. "You're a beta tester aren't you? You let Diavel die back there." There he goes accusing people again. I know what I saw. Kirito tried to help Diavel but Diavel didn't accept it. "You probably knew that the boss had a different weapon and a different attack pattern than what was in the beginner's manual. You withheld information from us!" The rest of the group started agreeing with him and Kirito just laughed.

"Oh please. Don't even compare me to those noobs. Most of them didn't even get past the first floor. I was the only one to make it to the higher floors. I know more information about this game than any broker you can find." Everyone gasped and I was in shock. Anyone who was in the beta test knew that there were a handful of people that made it to the higher floors. I don't know why he would lie… unless.

"You're even worse than a beta tester, you're a cheater." Someone said

"He's a beta tester and a cheater… he's a beater." Another one followed up with. Kirito just smiled.

"Call me whatever you want." He said while going through his inventory and putting on his coat of midnight and heading to the entrance to the next floor. The girl he was partnered with followed him.

"How did you know my name?" She asked him. He explained

"When you're in a party with someone you see their name and status under yours." She looked at her HUD to try and find Kirito's name.

"Ki, Ri, To. Kirito?" She said unsurely. He nodded. "Sorry, I'm still new to this." Kirito gave her some advice.

"Someone as strong as you should try and find a guild you can trust. There is a limit to how far a solo player can go. Find one you're comfortable with and stick with them." Asuna nodded and Kirito walked up to the door, but before he opened it he closed the party he was in. He then walked out to the second floor. My cousin was confused by what just happened.

"Cousin why would Kirito do that? I thought you said he was cool."

"He is DJ, he just made a smart decision for the sake of everyone else." He was even more confused with my answer.

"I don't get how he made a smart decision." Nina chimed in.

"I think I know. Kirito just made it so that people don't have to hate beta testers but instead hate 'beaters'. People need to work together to get free from this place and they can't do that if they hate each other. If they place their blame on Kirito, then other beta testers won't have to deal with hate from other people." DJ got what I meant now.

"I still feel bad for Kirito. Now everyone else is going to hate him."

"While it's true he just drew a lot of hate towards him there are people like us who know that Kirito is a good guy and would be willing to help him out should he need it." Nina and DJ both nodded.

"Well one floor down, ninety-nine to go." DJ said excitedly.

"You're right cuz. Shall we go check out the second floor?" DJ and Nina nodded excitedly. With that we went to the door that Kirito opened to the second floor. Our journey should be smoother from now on.

 **Sorry for taking so long I went out of state for the week and left my girlfriend with the bulk of the typing. She wanted to wait until I got back to confirm that everything looked good. I think she did a great job but that's up to you guys to decide. Until next time, this is ragmanthemadman and companion signing off.**


	5. Merry Christmas

**A new chapter for you guys. This one is entirely typed by my girlfriend bar the AN's. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.**

 **Fair warning that things get a little explicit.**

[Max's POV]

After the incident that happened on the first floor, things have gone a lot more smoothly. Everyone took a lesson from what happened. Now we have a dedicated assault team made up of a majority of skilled players who want to clear the game. Of course, Nina, DJ, and I are a part of the assault team. The assault team is also much more organized than when it first started out. Before, we went on the word of the beginner's manual. Now, we actually do reconnaissance of the boss before we go and assault it. Ever since we've adopted this new way of doing things, we clear floors faster and we lose less people per floor. That's not all that's been happening either. Guilds have sprouted up quickly. Of course, we decided to make a guild ourselves. We named our guild the warhawks, the name of me and Nina's school sports teams. We already have a decent following of players. As a matter of fact, we are in the top ten for amount of people in a guild. Some guilds are formed like a military. Others are formed just for friends or casual players. Our guild is a mixture of both. It's set up so that our members have ranks but at the same time it's very laid back and we use the term ranks loosely. A new recruit can talk to me or my second in commands, Nina and DJ, without any formalities and we would be fine with it.

Not everything has gone well however.

With the inclusion of guilds came a few with malicious intent. The one that comes to mind is the laughing coffin. They're a guild of murderers. They kill anyone no matter who they are. It sickens me that they think this is still a game. They justify their killing by telling themselves that dying in SAO doesn't mean you die in real life. While there is no proof that we know of, we shouldn't take what Akihiko Kayaba says with a grain of salt. He is the creator of SAO and the Nervegear after all.

So far we made it to floor 49 Myujen. Although, we still do some work on the lower floors. Figuring out the game was easy. Now, it's getting harder. The first 40 floors were simple. Just figure out a monster's attack pattern and figure out how to counter it. It was easy and anyone could do it. Now though, with every passing floor afterwards, the monsters only got harder to predict. SAO isn't a game that increases difficulty by making enemies tankier. Instead, it changes their algorithm to make it more unpredictable. This makes even normal monsters a challenge to fight against because you'll never know what the monster will do in advance. And since the floor boss is already basically a tank that becomes more unpredictable as we progress, it's becoming a great challenge to progress.

It's been almost a year now and Christmas was coming up soon. Nina, DJ and I wanted to do something fun as a family. There was an event boss that was coming in but so many players wanted to take up the challenge that we decided it wasn't going to be worth it, especially if we had to get violent with others in order to get it. We refuse to kill other players for a selfish reason like an item. It's something that we tell the members of our guild on a regular basis. Always help others in need but don't kill unless absolutely necessary.

In fact, Silica joined our guiled when she heard about it. She's the one that goes with parties on lower floors to help them out and to level up in the process. She is still trying to reach a level so she can be 'helpful to us'. If you ask me, I think she's helpful no matter what her level. It's ok though, she enjoys running with other parties. She even picked up a specialty during one of her trips. She fed a dragon some peanuts she bought on one of her excursions and it in turn began to like her and follow her around. It even heals and attacks in the middle of battle. She named the dragon Pina and is considered by many to be a beast tamer. I never even heard of this in the beta. It's really cool that Silica discovered it though. Now she has something that is unique to her.

I tried to offer a spot to Kirito but he joined another guild. I think something happened to them though because he's been distant lately. And I mean more than usual. He stopped helping out with the guild for a few months now. Normally, he'd help out the lower level groups on higher floors to get them to level up faster. It helped our guild get stronger members as well as getting Kirito some positive popularity. It wasn't much but it was something that helps him have an easier time. Especially with some of the player run blacksmiths and shops. But he hasn't helped out for a while. Why I'm not sure, but I'm thinking it has something to do with his guild. Makes sense considering he doesn't work with other guilds anymore with the exception of the assault team.

Anyways, Christmas rolled around and me, Nina, DJ, and Silica were sitting in a hotel room playing some board games that we found. It was pretty much older games like chess and mancala. But we had fun nonetheless. We even gave out some gifts to everyone. Silica gave DJ a spear that he's wanted for a while. He's loving spears lately. In return, DJ gave her a necklace. It gave her a substantial amount of defense. On top of that, it looked great on her too. I think that something more is happening between DJ and Silica. Nina gave me a love buckler. At least, that's what she called it. She pulled some strings and got a friend of hers to make the shield. And it's top notch too. It was a full body shield that covered the majority of my body. It had really high defense as well. She says that it's a reminder of what she said to me when we first met. That no matter what happened, she would always have my back. It was a very thoughtful gift and it's why I love her.

What I gave her in return? Well that was something that I had to do just between her and I, but I clued DJ and Silica in on what I planned to do.

"You're going to do what!" Silica said while covering her mouth. Nina was waiting outside the hotel for me and her to take a walk around town.

"I'm going to ask her to marry me… in game of course. I even got a pair of rings for the both of us." I opened my inventory to materialize two rings. Both have the special property of giving us increased status ailment resistance plus all stats get a 10 percent increase when we fight together. That's not why I'm doing though. I'm doing it because I want our relationship to move forward. Despite us being stuck in this game we can still continue our relationship. It's kind of like I'm making the commitment to stick by her side forever. Something that I've never told her even though she told me when we first met.

"They're so beautiful." Silica said. "She's lucky to have a guy like you by her side." I just nodded.

"Yeah. But she was the one who was by my side when I needed her most." Silica gave me a 'what do you mean' look. DJ caught it.

"I'll tell you what he means when he heads out. If it's ok with you." He gestures towards me.

"Yeah. She's practically family, might as well fill her in." I put the rings in my pocket and went headed out of the room. Leaving Silica and DJ to have a chat about our past life and to have a little private time to themselves. I'm sure that something is sparking between the two of them. It's only a matter of time before it blossoms into a full blown relationship.

I went outside of the hotel to find Nina standing outside. She was wearing a casual red t-shirt and a ruffled skirt. She doesn't even have to try and she still looks gorgeous. She noticed me walk out of the hotel and she gave me a smile.

"Ready for our walk?" I asked. She nodded happily. I took her hand and I led her around town. It was the middle of the night in SAO and, because it's the holiday season, there's a lot of lights illuminating the town. bright colored lights surround us everywhere we go. It's a really breathtaking sight. I have to admit that Kayaba really put a lot of detail into this already immersive world. I led Nina just outside of town onto a bridge that allowed you to see the whole town in its glory. The view earned an elongated 'wow' from Nina. This was where I wanted to give my proposal. "Nina…" She looked at me. "I can't tell you how much you mean to me. You brought me out of a tough time and have stayed by my side since. You told me you would stick by me no matter what. Now, it's my turn to say that to you." My heart was beating hard as I got on my knee in front of her and pulled the ring out of my pocket. Nina covered her mouth and gasped. "Nina, will you marry me?" I saw tears flow out of her eyes as her hands were still over her mouth. Unable to speak, she nods her head quickly. I felt a huge weight come off my chest as I gave a sigh of relief. I wasn't sure how this would go. Part of me thought that she would have been too flustered to say yes. I put the ring on her ring finger and I sent her the marriage request. She didn't even read it, she quickly accepted it. We then connected our lips together for a long kiss. Our ceremony just went down at the same time as the proposal. It was probably our longest kiss. When we pulled apart we were both out of breath. Nina then showed me a smile.

"You know we have to celebrate our marriage." She said to me.

"I didn't plan a honeymoon. We still have to clear the 50th floor in a few days." She pondered what to do instead of a honeymoon and whatever she thought of made her blush, big time.

"We might as well hang out at the hotel and wait until after the boss raid to do something." That was unexpected. When Nina wants to celebrate something she will think of something to do that would be a proper celebration. Seeing her just give up on trying to find a way to celebrate was really unlike her, but at the same time I can understand why she wants to wait. The assault that will happen soon will mark the halfway point for beating SAO. We needed to be ready for it.

"Ok. I understand. Let's head back to the hotel."

"Thank you." She said while holding my hand again. She and I walked back into town and towards the hotel. It was getting late and the town was starting to die down. The lights were shutting off one by one and the shops that were open late were starting to close. Luckily inns never close. When we arrived at the hotel I went to check on DJ and Silica who were both asleep in the room. Silica was in the bed and DJ was on the couch. Made me wonder what they did while we were out. We were only gone for a half hour. Not wanting to wake them up, I got another room for Nina and I. We both got inside and I was about to do my nightly routine until Nina grabbed a hold of me, stopping me.

"What's wrong?" She pulled me closer and I accepted the invitation without any thought.

"There are a lot of things that couples do that we haven't." I nodded getting what she meant. "This damn game is stopping us form being able to continue to get closer. When I said that I wanted to be with you for life I meant it. I want to help you in any way I can and I mean _any_ way I can." She put an emphasis on any.

"I love you very much Nina, but you don't have to do anything. Just being there is good for me." She gave me a more serious look now.

"Don't lie to me. I've been dating you long enough to know when you are." I opened my mouth to respond but she cut me off. "Don't say you're not lying. We've been dating long enough for me to know when you're lying."

"Lying about what?"

"That just me being around is enough for you because if it was we would be just friends." She had a point. "You want a more physical relationship." She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up a little bit. I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks as she said that.

"It would be nice, but I only want to get physical if it means something. I don't want a one and done scenario. I want to do something only if it's out of love." She seemed to like my answer.

"How do you feel?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean how are you feeling lately with all the responsibilities you picked up for the guild. You got recognized as one of the commanders of the assault team and you lead one of the biggest guilds in Aincrad. On top of that, you have yourself and us to worry about. How does all of this make you feel?" I still wasn't sure what she was getting at.

"It makes me feel responsible I guess. What are you getting at here?"

"It doesn't make you feel stressed?" I had to think about that one.

"It does feel overwhelming at times, especially that death in this game is game over in real life. It makes things a lot more complicated." I finished with a sigh. Nina lets go of me and stands up while opening her menu.

"Then let me help ease the stress." She opens her inventory and her shirt and skirt disappears from her body, revealing her white bra and panties. Immediately, my body starts reacting. My heart rate increases and I could feel blood rushing to my pelvis. I avert my gaze. I've seen her like this before and it normally ended with me getting slapped in the face. There was that time at a study session when I walked in on her changing. Needless to say, it was an awkward study session.

"You don't need to do this. It's not a big deal really." She comes closer to me.

"You forget that we've been sleeping in the same room for a while now and I know that you've been having trouble sleeping through the night. It's not a big deal my ass." She sighs. "Remember the sleepovers we had when we first met." I nodded. "I saw you always awake late at night pacing around. Your breathing was shallow and quick like you were hyperventilating. You told me it was because you had nightmares of losing your parents." I nodded remembering those nights too well. I always had nightmares of that night my parents were killed. Our house was getting robbed and my family was held hostage while the cops arrived. When SWAT assaulted the house things went from bad to worse. When the raid was over my parents were killed and I was somehow alive. It's not a memory I like to relive but every night for a couple months I had nightmares of that night. It was so vivid and real that I ended up waking up in the middle of the night hyperventilating from it. I had to calm myself down before I tried to sleep again. Some nights, I didn't want to sleep because I was afraid to have the nightmare again. I tried to keep everything to myself but I guess I wasn't discrete enough for her to see me. "I see you doing the same thing now. Your nightmares are back aren't they." I tensed up a bit. She was right about my nightmares coming back.

"It's not that nightmare."

"I figured it wasn't." she got behind me and put her arms around my chest, pushing her chest against my back. "It has to do with me and DJ huh?" I lowered my head. She knew a lot about me. She knows how selfless I am and how I care more about others than myself.

"It's just that lately things have been getting more and more harsh here in SAO. The higher we go, the harder it gets and the more danger we put ourselves in. Every day I think about whether or not we'll last throughout the day. The thought of losing either one of you is overwhelming. It's the only thing that's keeping me going through this." I extended my arm and pointed around the room trying to show her that I meant SAO.

"I know it's worrisome for you. Let me help you cope with it. It's the least that I can do." I love the offer but I just can't accept.

"As much as I would love to do… _that_ … I just can't accept your offer." She let go of me slowly and I turned to face her. She was shaking a little bit which told me that this was more of something that she felt like she needed to do rather than wanted to do. "Like I said before, you don't need to do this to help. Yes, I would like a physical relationship but not if you feel like you need to do it. It should be when you want to do it. I don't want you to rush into something you're not ready for. And to be honest I don't even think I'm ready for it. You being there is comforting enough and I truly mean that." Nina just stood behind me and was tearing up a bit. I brought her into an embrace.

"I don't want you to get depressed like you did when your parents died. Promise me that when it gets too hard for you to handle that you come and see me, ok?" I nodded. She pulled from the embrace with a yawn.

"Let's get some rest. We'll need our strength for the raid." She nodded and she hopped into the bed not bothering to change into her nightgown. "Not going to change?"

"Why? It's not anything you haven't seen before." She said referencing our time spent before SAO. "I have a request though."

"What is it?"

"Can you also get undressed? I'm still not used to doing this and having someone else like this will help me feel less embarrassed about it." I wasn't used to this but if it helps her feel more comfortable then I will do it. I opened my inventory and took off my clothes bar my underwear. I quickly get under the covers with Nina because it was pretty cold without my clothes on. Out of habit, I put my arm over Nina, but I forgot she was only in her bra and panties, so I accidentally brushed over her breasts which did not go unnoticed by her. "Now you want to accept my offer?"

"No I forgot I swear." She just chuckled and snuggled closer to me. Her behind was nearly touching my crotch. Luckily, I was able to ignore any feeling and avoided making this more awkward than it needs to be.

"Goodnight Max."

"Goodnight Nina." Yup, best Christmas ever.

 **The reason I skipped over a lot of floors over to this one is because the anime doesn't speak of the floors below floor 49 much except for when Kirito joined his first guild. We can't make an adventure for the group of three if we don't have a lot of information on the floors. Hope you enjoyed nonetheless and until next time this is ragmanthemadman and companion signing off.**


	6. Reviving Pina Part 1

**Hey guys! This is half of the real update. We were taking forever to get the whole idea into one chapter so we decided to split it into two to give you guys something now and something more shortly. Enjoy! This idea was suggested by Sandshrew master 317.**

 **P.S. we've reached 1,500 views. My girlfriend said there must have been an error but Fanfiction said it right on the screen. We both thank everyone for their support.**

[DJ's POV]

The day went by as usual for me. I tend to just go around and help guild members with some missions and afterwards go to help Silica train Pina. So far all we can get it to do is heal her but that was nothing to sneeze at. It can really help her out in a pinch. We were going to train all night but apparently a group wanted to find some items that can only be found on monsters that come out at night. They wanted Silica to go. I offered to go in her place but she was adamant about going.

"I need to level up so I can be of more use to you guys." She would say as her reason. I keep telling her that she's not useless like she thinks she is but she says that she needs to be our level so that she can help with the assault team, which is something completely separate from our guild. While we support anyone who wants to be on the assault team, we don't force them to join if they don't want to. Normally I'm gung ho with her leveling up with our guild members but today there were a couple reasons why I wasn't. One, they're going to a floor that's kinda pushing her level range. And two, the group she's going with has Rosalia in it. I am not very fond of her. she's very full of herself and believes that she deserves a lot of things that she really doesn't. She's not even in our guild, the people who are just know her and like hanging out with her. They haven't done anything wrong yet so I figured I'd turn a blind eye… for now.

It was coming up on that time that she had to go, so I tried one last time to convince her to stay with me for tonight.

"Are you sure you want to go with them? They aren't going to a low level place that you can just waltz through. It's a pretty serious area." She pumped her fists in a determined manner.

"If I don't take risks I can't get strong. I need to do this." I nod with a slight dejection.

"Ok, just stay safe ok?" She smiles at me.

"I will." She gave me a light kiss on the cheek. It's become a routine for us to do that lately. Yet we really haven't said that we're officially dating. She went off and left me alone. I would hang out with my cousin but he was doing something with Nina. Something that had to do with his birthday I think. For the first time in a video game, I am bored. I ponder what to do and then it clicked when I remembered it was my cousin's birthday. _I'll get her a gift._ _It's been a while since I've given her something that shows my appreciation for her._ I think to myself as I wander out in search of a blacksmith. I have a lot of items that can be used to forge gear of high quality. I just need to find a blacksmith that can do it. I wander around town to try and look for a smithy but there's no good ones on the floor that I'm on. Not ones that can make what I had in mind for her anyway. Then I overhear some players talking to each other so I try and listen in from a distance so they don't notice me. I have a pretty good listening skill so this is a piece of cake.

"Dude! That sword is a really good quality. That guy at the Town of Beginnings really knows his stuff."

"Yeah he does. He started smithing as soon as he could and now he's one of the highest leveled blacksmiths out there." If the blacksmith they're talking about is in the Town of Beginnings and knew about smithing early on, he had to be a beta tester. With new players looking for good gear right from the start, he must be doing pretty well for himself.

"What's the name of his shop I gotta get my hands on some better gear and I don't feel like grinding monster drops until I get one." Not going to lie it can get pretty annoying after a while, but that's the fun of this game. At least for me it is.

"It's called golden hammer's smith shop." Weird name but if he's as good as they say, I can see where the name might have come from. That was all the information I needed to hear from them. I head to the teleport pad in the middle of town and initiate the teleport.

"Teleport, Town of Beginnings." A blue light engulfs my vision and in an instant, the environment around me changes to match that of the Town of Beginnings. Even though a lot of players moved on to the higher floors, there were still some that stayed down here or came down on a regular basis to get some gear. It's like the HUB of Aincrad. I make my way off of the teleport pad and made my way to the map that was in front of me. I look around the map to try and find the smith shop that was talked about and found that it wasn't too far from where I currently was. I started to make my way towards the blacksmith, getting gradually more excited the closer I got. _I can't wait to give Silica some new gear. I hope this smithy is as good as other's make him out to be._ I wasn't paying attention to where I was going and bumped into another player. My strength stat isn't the highest but whoever I bumped into must be lower because he was knocked flat on his ass when he bumped into me.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going." I held out my hand to help him up and he accepted. He looked at me and his eyes immediately lit up.

"You're one of the commanders of the Warhawks guild aren't you." He said rather loudly and I put my hands up to try and quiet him down. I'm not one that likes attention.

"Yes, but keep it down. I'm not one to like having attention, especially when I'm trying to do something on my own. He realizes his mistake and apologizes. I notice he was a little shaky and looked like he was on the verge of a full blown panic attack. "Why are you so tense? What's wrong?" I ask him as he tries to calm himself down.

"I…" he was apprehensive about telling me what was wrong.

"Don't worry, we're alone and I won't tell anyone. Just spit it out." I tell him calmly. He nods and looks at me with a look of anger.

"I need your help."

* * *

[Silica's POV]

"Why do you have to hog all of the healing crystals!?" I said on the verge of yelling at Rosalia, a party member. We were going through a field dungeon to try and collect some good crafting and smithing materials. We try to share the materials evenly but Rosalia insisted that all the healing crystals should go to her.

"Because I need them to stay alive. Besides, why do you need them? Your pet dragon can heal you, can't it?" Pina, my pet dragon who was currently on top of my head, growled at Rosalia, and I agreed with her. I was on the verge of growling as well.

"Hey now there's no need to fight over this." One of the other members said trying to defuse the situation, but it didn't work. I couldn't spend another second with Rosalia.

"You know what, I'll just head back to Mishe on my own. I know a lot of other parties who would love to have me on their team, and at least they share things evenly." I turn and walk away, ignoring the calls of my name from the other party members telling me not to go. I tried to retrace my steps to get out of the forest, but unfortunately, I don't have the memory I thought I did and I got lost fairly easily. To make matters worse, I was still in a dungeon, that unfortunately means that monsters are everywhere. I slip past the ones I can but others like to hang out in choke points in between trees or end up sneaking up on me. I fight off the ones I can, but some of them are too strong for me. the longer I stayed, the later it got and the more dangerous the monsters that spawn are going to be. It was nighttime and the sun mostly set when I was just outright lost. I had no idea where I was. I was about to pull up a map of the area when I heard a soft growl coming from behind me. I turned around and found a drunken ape looking dead at me. Drunken apes are out of my level range. They out level me pretty substantially. Not to mention that I don't have the best gear. I turn to retreat but two more Drunken apes appear and block any chance of escape. I could have tried to handle one but three is too much for me. I pull my dagger out of its sheath and prepare myself for a fight. The first Ape charged dead at me and I jumped out of the way. The other two grabbed him and made him avoid hitting the tree I was standing in front of. The three look at me with anger in their eyes, and then fight me together. One punch was thrown which I dodged easily. A second was thrown, this time lower at my legs. I jump to avoid it but it was a big mistake. The last ape threw a punch that hit my square in my gut. I get thrown buck into a tree. I land on my feet, although my legs are a little wobbly and my health is in the yellow. Pina heals me back into the green.

"Thanks Pina." But it's not enough. I need more health if I'm going to take these three on. I dig into my pocket and felt around and my heart dropped. _I'm out of healing crystals!_ Was my last thought as an ape swiped his paw ate me and hit me right on the side of my midsection. I flew into yet another tree as my health went into the red and the borders of my vision started flashing red. Pina's heal was on a cooldown and I had no energy to move. One ape brought his paw back and swung hard at me. I closed my eyes anticipating the impact but I instead heard a squeal that sounded like Pina. I opened my eyes to confirm my suspicion.

"Pina!" I yelled as I held her in my hand as her health bar decreased down to nothing. When I heard the two beeps that indicated that Pina was killed, she exploded into blue triangles right in my hand. I couldn't believe it. Pina, my partner, was killed and died in my hands. I couldn't help but blame myself. I was so in the moment, that I forgot about the other apes that was ready to kill me. That broke me. I just looked at them and just cried. I knew there was no way out of this. I was going to die here. The apes were about to attack until I heard three piercing sounds. The last one showed a spear sticking out of the ape in the center. The three apes started glowing blue and then exploded, one by one, into triangles. Standing behind where the apes was none other than DJ.

"Looks like a got her just in time." He said with a smile, but it instantly faded when he saw tears coming out of my eyes. He immediately ran to me and knelt down to me. "What happened?" He asked with concern. I just embraced him. I needed a shoulder to cry on.

"…Pina." I said softly after a sniffle. DJ must have known what I meant and he dropped his hands.

"I'm sorry. I should have gotten here sooner." I shook my head which was buried in his chest.

"Don't blame yourself… I shouldn't have left that party." I said with a sniffle in the middle. I held onto him for a couple more minutes before I regained my composure. I let him go and wiped the tears away from my eyes. "Thank you for comforting me."

"No problem. What are friends for?" He looked around and noticed something and walked over to it. "What's this?" He asks holding up a glowing feather. I look at it with curiosity.

"I don't know."

"It's not my item so I can't check the item name. you probably can though." He hands the item to me and I inspect it. The feather was Pina's heart. I clutched the item close to my body and I started crying again.

"I'm so sorry Pina." I said whilst sobbing. DJ tried to comfort me.

"What if I told you that item could be used to revive Pina?" I looked up at him with tears in my eyes.

"How?"

"Well, my cousin was telling me that he heard from another beast tamer that if your beast dies and drops their heart you can revive them at the Hill of Memories on floor 47." I perk up at the thought of reviving Pina. Other than DJ, she's the only one that hangs out with me on a regular basis. She's like family to me. No, she is family.

"That's excellent news. I'll spend some time levelling up and when I'm ready I can…" He cuts me off.

"There's a time limit for this. You have to get it done within three days of the heart dropping or it's not going to work." That put a wrench in my plans.

"Can you do it for me then? I barely survived this floor on my own. Going to floor 47 would be suicide at my current level." He sighed.

"As much as I would hate to put you in danger, if you really want to revive Pina you would have to go to the 47th floor. There's an item called the pneuma flower that only blooms when a beast tamer is present." It was my turn to sigh at the predicament.

"So what do you suggest?"

"I think that we should go together to get the flower. I have a higher level than floor 47 recommends, and you'll be there to make the flower bloom. Plus, you can level up easily." I gave them the 'are you crazy' look.

"In case you haven't noticed, I am not geared to face the monster on that floor." That seemed to make him remember something as he quickly held up his finger in a 'eureka!' stance.

"That reminds me, I got some better gear made for you he started a trade and it showed the many items that he got for me. better body armor, gauntlets, dagger, even boots, plus some accessory items to make me a little bit better.

"How in the heck did you get all of this." He chuckled.

"I fight so much on the higher floors with the assault team, I have plenty of crafting materials to make almost anything."

"You're not a blacksmith though. How did you get the money to pay someone to make all of this?"

"Same way I got all the crafting materials. Grinding monster drops." I was amazed at how he got the items and funds needed to get these items. That's a lot of monsters, he had to kill.

"There's no way I can accept this without compensation." I begin to start increasing the amount of money to give him as compensation.

"No need to give me any money for this. It's a gift." I stopped increasing the amount.

"Gift for what?"

"It's for all the times we spent together." He started to blush. "You really mean a lot to me. you're a big part of my motivation to clear the game." That made my day. All the sadness I had about Pina, vanished when he said that. I blushed a little at his comment.

"I, don't know what to say. Thank you for holding me in such high regard." I put the money for the trade back down to zero and hit accept. Once he accepted, all the items went to my inventory.

"Now, back to the issue at hand. We need to get back to Mishe and out of this forest dungeon." He leads the way out of the dungeon, allowing me to get some kills from time to time. I leveled up a couple times as well. It wasn't long before we got back to Mishe. The nightlife was bustling when we got there. Which gave me an idea.

"As thanks for helping me out I'll treat you to dinner. Sound good?" He was going to respond but I heard a low rumble instead.

"My stomach says yes." He joked. That got a chuckle out of me. I was leading him to the diner I wanted to eat at but we were stopped by my old party members.

"Hey Silica!" one of my old party members called out. I smiled a little awkwardly at them and gave them a wave.

"Hey guys." I said a little softly. I felt awkward with a lot of my old party members, they tend to do things to me that makes me feel uncomfortable. It's something I don't like talking to others about, but it's a double edged sword because no one knows that I don't like it when they do certain things. I gotta learn to be more assertive.

"Do you want to party with us? We're about to acquire some nice gear." That's the last thing I want to do right now. No offence to them, but I have other things I need to do.

"That's a nice offer, but…" I looked at DJ, then I grabbed his arm to bring him close. "…But I'm going to party with him for the day." He was surprised at the sudden movement but didn't resist it. I motioned for him to continue towards our destination, which he did. I glanced back to see the players glaring at DJ. That's what I mean by making me uncomfortable. They become almost obsessed with me.

"You ok Silica?" DJ asks. I nod my head.

"I'm fine, just keep going." He obliges and continues further towards our destination.

We arrive at our destination and sit down at a table to order some food. DJ was reading the news going on around SAO. When he read something in particular, his expression dropped into a scowl.

"Damn Laughing Coffin. They killed another member of the assault team." He said whilst shaking his head. That reminded me of something that I wanted to know for a while now. Ever since I was first told about guilds like the Laughing Coffin.

"How does player killing work in games like this?" I ask him he looks up from the news he was reading and set it aside.

"It's not very complicated. The icons you see above players are normally green. I would show you an example but we're inside and you can't see player's icons when indoors." I looked above his head where the icons would normally be but they weren't there. I actually never noticed that before. "It means that they're a clean player. They didn't attack another green player. However, if you do attack a green player the icon above your head will turn orange. This means that you committed a crime against another player and you can't go into a safe zone."

"Why not? You already committed a crime, what's stopping you to go into a safe zone?"

"The NPC's that guard the door will stop you from going in and you can't attack them because they're basically invincible." I nodded in amazement and understanding.

"What if an orange player is attacking me, if I retaliate will I be marked with an orange cursor?" DJ shook his head.

"No, you don't get a penalty for attacking an orange player."

"Oh wow. How do you get rid of the orange cursor?" DJ chuckled a bit and looked at me curiously.

"What's with the sudden interest?"

"I really wanted to know more about player killing since I found out about guilds like the Laughing Coffin." He nodded before continuing.

"I didn't know at first, but after reading up on it I found out there are actually multiple stages of the orang cursor. The first three stages wear off over time, the fourth stage requires a karma quest to be completed, and the fifth stage is when the orange cursor is permanent. At that point, you'd be called a red player or player killer. Some guilds are made of majority red players, like the Laughing Coffin. They're classified as red guilds to the assault team. Don't get confused though, contrary to the name red players still have an orange cursor." This was interesting for me to learn. Especially since I basically live in this game now and I should learn as much as I can about it.

"Thanks for the lesson DJ." I said while showing him a smile.

"No problem. Now it's my turn for a question."

"Ask away."

"What happened with the group today that made you leave." My smile faded.

"How did you know I left?"

"I think you know better than to willingly go in the woods alone at night. Something must have happened that made you leave the group." I looked down.

"Rosalia was hogging all of the items we found, including the healing crystals. I couldn't take the fact that she thought so highly of herself and that the other party members did nothing to stop her. I got fed up and left." He nodded in understanding.

"This is the first time it's happened though, right?" I looked around awkwardly.

"Well no."

"But there is another thing that happens a lot that troubles you."

"Yeah. How did you guess?"

"When you hurried to get away from your old party members." I sighed. I was hoping he wouldn't catch on to that.

"I just don't like hanging out with those guys. They don't even want me in their party because I could help them fight, they want me in their party because they like me in their party."

"What's wrong with that?" It wasn't until he said that, that I realized I worded what I wanted to say wrong.

"I mean they generally use me as a mascot. They don't take me seriously at all. What's even worse is that people are starting to become obsessed with me. I'm literally all they think about. They even gave you a glare when we were walking away from them." He nodded in understanding of what I meant.

"Why didn't you tell me this? I could have done something about it. Some of those players are in our guild after all. If you felt like this, I would've wanted to help you." He looked down and twiddled his thumbs on the table. Without thinking I put my hands onto his.

"No, don't say that. I didn't want to disturb your work with the rest of the guild that's all."

"That is work for the guild. Besides I want to make sure you're comfortable with the guild members. If they step out of line, I need to know about it." I was a bit flustered when he put my feelings as a priority for him. And given the fact that I was holding his hands, it made me even more flustered. I felt myself getting hot in my cheeks. I immediately pull my hands off of his and start fanning myself.

"Wow, our food sure is taking a while." I said whilst still fanning myself. It's not that I don't enjoy speaking to DJ, I just get this warm feeling inside me when I do and it's something that I'm not used to so I act like an idiot. He probably thinks it's cute though because he smiles whenever I'm like that. I would say that I don't like that if it was anyone else, but if it's DJ, I don't mind.

* * *

We finish eating dinner and go rent our rooms in the inn. I was in my room with nothing but my undergarments on. I thought about sleeping in a nightgown that I had but it was pretty warm in the room and I still wanted to use the covers without being too hot. Before I got under the covers though I plopped on the bed with exhaustion. I started thinking about all the times I spent with DJ and the time's that he's made me feel happy despite the fact I'm trapped in this game.

"I wonder how he would react if I said I wanted to talk to him more." I said to no one in particular, but as if he heard what I just said I heard a knock at the door followed by his voice.

"Silica, are you still awake?"

"DJ? Yeah I am." I said with a little bit of shock at his sudden appearance.

"I wanted to go over some details of floor 47 if you're up to it." I was happy that he came to my room. I was hoping to talk more with him anyways.

"Oh it's fine." I got out of the bed to go open the door for him."

"Actually I was hoping I would be able to…" I stopped as I reached the door. The realization that I'm only in my undergarments hit me like a truck. I like DJ, but there is no way that I'm going as far as showing him my body… yet. I'm already flustered when I speak to him. If I showed him my body like that I wouldn't be able to function. I guess I paused for too long because DJ spoke again.

"Be able to what?" I got flustered again. It was a lot to be dealing with at once.

"Nothing! Just give me a second." I quickly open my menu and equip my nightgown to wear for tonight. It's still a little revealing considering it's a little transparent and it ends above my kneecap. Anything is better than nothing. As soon as I get it on I open the door for him and retreat back to the bed. Thank goodness he wasn't paying attention to see me scatter back either. He was fiddling with his menu at the door before I let him in. He got whatever he wanted out of his inventory and then he walked in. He moved the table in the room to the side of the bed, right in front of where I was sitting. I was looking down while trying to regain my composure.

"Something wrong Silica?" I shook my head no, trying to hide the fact I was still flustered over what just happened.

"Nothing, just spacing out." He thought nothing of my answer and placed what he pulled out of his inventory on the table. "What's that?" I say with intrigue.

"It's a mirage sphere." He said as he activated it. A holographic map appeared from the sphere. It looked like something out of Star Wars. Yes, that movie is still popular after all these years. I let out an audible "wow!" as I got up from the bed to get a closer look. "This is the path we're going to take to the hill of memories." A yellow line appeared to mark the path to our destination. "On the way there are going to be monsters. I was thinking I'd weaken them while you deliver the finishing blow so you can level up and get some stat increases." I nodded, following everything he said. "Once we get to The Hill of Memories we should…" He stopped and stared at the door.

"What is it D…"

"SSHHH!" He said whilst putting his finger over his mouth. He quickly ran to the door and opened it. "WHO'S THERE!" He said as he looked around outside the door. I don't know if anyone else inside their rooms could hear him but if they can the whole inn probably heard him yell. After a couple more seconds of looking around he came back inside, shutting the door behind him.

"What's going on?"

"Someone was spying on us." I recalled something he told me a few months ago and it didn't add up.

"I thought you couldn't hear through a locked door unless you knock first."

"If you have a high enough listening skill you can bypass that."

"Then how did you know there was an eavesdropper?"

"I have a high detection skill. It was recommended to have one for when I go into dungeons by myself and don't want to get blindsided by monsters, or worse, players." He deactivated the mirage sphere and put it back in his inventory. "That was the jist of it. Make sure you get some rest. it'll be a tough day for us tomorrow." He began walking towards the door but I grabbed his arm to stop him. I'm not sure what came over me that made me do that.

"Wait, don't go." He turned to look at me.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't like the fact that someone just tried to eavesdrop on us. I have a feeling that something bad will transpire from it and that scares me." He rubbed the top of my head. We were the same height but he loved doing that to me for some reason, and I don't exactly resist either.

"It'll be ok. They might be able to listen through your door but they can't break through it."

"Still, I would feel a lot better if…" it took everything I had to say this and I still said it rather fast. "youstayedthenightherewithme." I said in one breath. It took him a sec to translate that but he understood what I meant.

"Sure no problem. I can sleep on the couch."

"NO!" I said rather loudly. I didn't want him sleeping on the couch. I wanted him by me to make me feel safe when I'm asleep. I really don't know where the confidence came from.

"I want you to sleep with me tonight, but nothing naughty." I said sternly. "I just want you there to help me feel safe for the night." He couldn't help but chuckle at what I was saying. It took a lot to get this far and him laughing isn't helping my confidence.

"You're cute you know that." That comment made it even worse. "Sure, I'll spend the night. Just give me a sec to change into my nightclothes." He pulled out his menu, almost oblivious to me being there. I was going to say something but it was too late as his menu was already open and he already removed his clothes bar his underwear. Time slowed at that point as I took it all in. DJ may be young but his body is pretty built. His abs, arms and legs, are, not muscular, but are definitely toned. I didn't intend to look but he just changed right in front of me. how could I not look? The view was short lived because a t-shirt and shorts appeared to cover him up. I decided to quickly hop into bed and look the other way, hoping that he didn't catch me looking. I heard his menu close and he hopped into bed with me. He played it safe and stayed on one side while I was on the other. While I appreciated the gesture, after all I did tell him that he was to spend the night and nothing more. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I turned over and got up next to him, using his chest as a pillow. He was caught off guard by what I did but proceeded to place his arms around me giving me a better sense of security. For the first time since I got trapped in SAO, I felt safe, and I also felt… love.

 **Just to show you how far we got with the whole idea, when we decided to split it up we had 7,000 words total. This was a big chunk of that. We'll continue working on the second part and try to get that out as soon as possible. Until next time, this is ragmanthemadman and companion signing off.**


	7. Reviving Pina Part 2

**Part 2 has arrived. Fanfiction didn't give me a notification of part 1 going up but it is up. Hope you enjoy it.**

[DJ's POV]

I woke up really early. Something that I've been conditioned to do so I can get the most work done in a day. Running a guild, being a part of the assault team, and on top of that worrying about your own level. It leaves one with a lot to do throughout the day. However, today is not the day I have to worry about all of that. There's just two things I have to worry about. Reviving Pina, and doing a favor for a guild. I was about to get out of bed when I felt something on my chest weighing me down. When I looked down I saw Silica lying next to me with her head on my chest. I completely forgot that I was sleeping next to her. I immediately became flustered. I normally keep a cool head but not when something surprises me. I carefully moved her head off of my chest. Thankfully, she was out cold so it was easy for me to do. After setting her head onto a pillow I moved off the bed and into the bathroom to shower. The sims characteristics that this game has gets really annoying at times. If it wasn't for the realistic senses that you get in this game, I wouldn't shower at all. But let me tell you guys something, it works, really well.

After my shower I put on my armor and was about to leave the room, until I saw Silica still asleep on the bed. I had to wake her up. Reviving Pina is for her benefit after all. I thought about how to do so while messing with her a little and it came to me perfectly. I bent down and gave her a light kiss on her mouth and was about to calmly say you have to wake up, but a prompt flashed right in front of me and startled me so bad I fell on my ass. That was loud enough to wake Silica up.

"Huh!? What's going on?" She asked while looking around. Then her eyes caught the prompt in front of her. I was curious what it said but Silica made it easy for me to figure out. "Inappropriate action detected. Punish player?" She then looks at me and I raise my hands innocently. "What did you do exactly?" I immediately blushed. I like Silica, a lot, but she can get really flustered if something even remotely romantic happens. It'll probably be to the point that in the heat of the moment she punishes me.

"I wanted to wake you up while messing with you a little bit. So I, kissed you a little and _that_ popped up." I gestured at the prompt when I said 'that'.

"We've given each other goodbye kisses before. What's the big deal about it now?" I had a couple theories.

"It might be because I kissed you in your sleep, or because I kissed you on the lips." She looked at the prompt again when I said that.

"Oh." She said rather neutral. She was taking this a lot better than I thought she would. "YOU DID WHAT!" Or not. I raised my hands in self-defense.

"I just wanted to mess with you a little. I didn't have any malicious intent with it." She gave me a death stare, something she's good at when she's not flustered. In fact, I was the one that was flustered.

"I'll let you off the hook. Just don't do it again." She mumbled something I couldn't quite make out under her breath.

"What was that?"

"NOTHING!" She quickly hit the red X button on the prompt screen to deny the offer. Probably wanting to forget about this ordeal as quickly as she can. She got out of bed and started to head to the bathroom. When she reached the door she turned and pointed a stern finger at me.

"Don't, peak." The sternness in her voice was enough to make me actually retreat outside where she can't accuse me of peaking if she wanted to. I didn't even have any plans to peak in the first place. In fact,

"Don't worry. I won't even be in the room. I was going to bring some breakfast for us before we head out." She immediately regrets her stern request and looks down, apologetically. I was about to ask what she would like but she went inside the bathroom quickly and turned on the shower. I decided to just grab classic pancakes. Even though SAO has a medieval setting, some players who dedicated themselves to becoming chefs, found ways to make real life food in game. By the time the pancakes were made I made my way back up to the door to Silica's room when I realized I needed her permission to open the door in the first place. Before I knocked I decided to listen in to what she was doing. I have a good listening skill so I can hear in a door without having to knock in the first place. Actually, last night I used it to find out that Silica wanted to talk to me more. That gave me the confidence to knock on the door in the first place even though I had the intention to talk about the plan for reviving Pina. What caught me off guard was the fact that she was either nude or was only in her undergarments. How did I know this? I heard something materialize. When I walked in she wasn't holding anything so I had to assume it was the nightgown she was wearing that got materialized. When I didn't hear anything for a minute I knocked on the door. I heard some movement in the room getting closer to the door. When it opened Silica was dressed in her armor that I got for her yesterday. She had on the Silverthread Armor, Moon Blazer, Fairy Boots, Florit Belt, and her sheathed Ebon Dagger that I got made for her the other day (The same things Kirito Gave her basically). It looks really good on her, not to mention it boosts her stats considerably.

"You going to stare at me all day or are you going to come in?" She asked blushing a bit at the fact I was staring at her. I snapped myself out of my trance and came in with the food. Breakfast was relatively quiet. We both just ate and didn't make much of a conversation. It was an awkward morning for the both of us and I think she agrees that she just wants to get out of this room to forget about it.

We finish our breakfast and check out the inn. We then teleported to Florem on floor 47. When we arrived I started searching for the path we needed to follow in order to get to The Hill of Memories. Silica, however, was drawn to the flowers that Florem is known for. She even started to sniff some of them. When I found the path I was about to call Silica over but then I caught a good look of her face. She was flustered, again. Probably because Florem was known as a romantic place. A lot of couples tend to come here on dates and picnics. I only know because Nina and my cousin come here often. I snapped her out of it by calling her name.

"Silica! I found the path we need to use." She looked up at me and I pointed my thumb behind me towards the path that was behind me while giving her a 'let's go' face. She quickly came over to me and she bowed.

"Sorry for keeping you waiting. I know you don't have to do this for me." Damn, now I felt bad for rushing her.

"It's no problem. I wanted to help anyway. It was partly my fault for not getting there in time anyway." Which was half true. I did want to help but there was an underlying reason I wanted to do this so bad. I can't tell her either because I don't want her to get too scared to do this with me. "Ready to go?" I asked her. She did a determined fist pump.

"Ready!" With that said, her and I followed the path towards the hill of memories. It was some ways away so I made sure I packed a lunch for us to eat on the way when we get hungry.

About 15 minutes in we encountered the first monster of the day. A Giant Venus Flytrap. This is the most common monster found in Florem. It isn't strong to me, but to Silica… it'll be difficult to deal with. Luckily I'm here to help.

"Ok Silica, I'm going to weaken it. When I say switch, you…" I couldn't finish because the monster didn't care to let me finish and attacked… sort of. It used a vine to tangle Silica at her legs. In a panic Silica unsheathed her Dagger and started swinging wildly. The monster responded by hoisting Silica up above its mouth. Since it grabbed her by her legs she was hung upside down and gravity started to pull her skirt down. It got lower and lower until I saw a white fabric covering her 'special' area. She reacted quickly though and used her off hand to pull the skirt over her panties whilst still swinging wildly.

"DJ save me, but don't look!" I covered my eyes to give her the impression I wasn't looking in the first place, but I was.

"That, would be difficult." I used my spear to cut the vine that was holding Silica, and as if powered by embarrassment and rage, Silica used her full power to slice downward at the Flytrap. Causing it to be cut right in the middle of itself. I wasn't sure how much damage I did but Silica did enough to finish it off. She landed on the ground, crouched and then stood back up still using her hand to keep the skirt down. She looked at me with embarrassment all over her face.

"You didn't see anything right?" I just chuckled awkwardly. I did see something, but it's probably best not to let her know that, plus, it was only for a second or two.

"No I didn't see anything." She still held her skirt down for safe measure but continued to walk. Down the path. Eventually, she moved her hand away from her skirt and got comfortable walking with me again. Whenever we ran into a monster we had a routine. I would weaken it and Silica would get the finishing blow. She gets the experience bonus for getting the last hit which helps level her up faster. It also gives her more proficiency with her dagger skills. We were almost an hour in when I heard a low rumble. I thought it was a monster at first but I didn't detect any. When I heard it again I saw Silica's face make an embarrassed look. I also saw instinctively rub her stomach. "Hungry Silica?" She was trying to be subtle about it but it didn't work, and she had a look of shock on her face that I figured it out.

"Um, yeah I am. Can we have lunch now?" It wasn't much further to The Hill of Memories and it's considered a safe zone.

"Can you hold on for a few minutes? We're almost at The Hill of Memories. It's considered a safe zone so we can eat without worrying about monsters." She nods.

"I can last until then. Let's hurry though." She starts to run off, and as soon as she does I detect the presence of a monster.

"Wait Silica!" I said as she stepped on the monster in question, a Land Anemone. It's like a trap monster. You step on where it's hiding underground and it attacks from below. Unfortunately for Silica she also stopped when I called out for her to wait so any chance of dodging for her is gone. The monster starts the first phase of his trap which is trapping the victim, Silica in this case, with its long, sticky tentacles. It then uses its tentacles to tie up Silica making her unable to move. Lastly, it reveals the rest of its wormlike body from underground, raising Silica a good 20 feet in the air.

"AAHHH! DJ HELP ME!" She yelled panicking again. In response to her outburst the Anemone used its tentacle to rub against her face, causing a sticky, slimy substance to cover her. As funny as that was I had to step in, so I jumped onto a nearby tree to get some height and then proceeded to jump off the branch, getting greater height than the monster. Don't ask how physics work in this game because it has a lot to do with stats and I don't fully understand it myself. I brought spear down in a vertical slice to cut the anemone, killing it in that one blow. The anemone exploded into blue triangles and Silica comes dropping from the height the monster held her. She landed right on her rear end and I gave her a smile. She responded with an awkward chuckle. Then out of my peripheral vision I saw the same white fabric covering her groin area. The view was very short however as she quickly put her hands over her skirt, pushing it down to cover her panties. I offered a hand to help her up and she accepted while still keeping one hand on her skirt. I note that her hand is still a bit sticky along with the rest of her body so I pull a towel out of my inventory and toss it to her. Don't ask why I always have a towel in my inventory. "Thank you." She says whilst using the towel to clean herself up.

"No Problem." I'm glad she didn't ask why I had the towel in the first place. After drying herself off we continue to make our way to The Hill of Memories. 

"What was that _thing_?" She shudders a bit when she says 'thing' so I assume that she means the Anemone that came out of nowhere earlier.

"That was a Land Anemone. It's a trap monster." She got a curious look.

"A trap monster?"

"Yeah, it only spawns when you set off a trap. In this case you step on an area that the Anemone was underneath and it jumped out to attack. You're used to traps going off that spawns waves of monsters on lower floors, but on higher floors monsters can take the form of traps." She shudders at the thought.

"I really hope I don't run into any more trap monsters like the Anemone again."

"As far as I know, that's the only trap of its kind." I hear her sigh of relief when I say that. It didn't take much longer to arrive at The Hill of Memories. Silica had a look of astonishment when we got there.

"Wow! It's so beautiful." She was right too. The entire place was surrounded with a wide variety of fauna making it look very colorful, and, because it's a safe zone, the lack of monsters just makes the whole area peaceful.

"Yeah it is. And if I'm not mistaken the flower blooms…" I look around a bit until I spot the pedestal that the flower grows on. "… right there." I said whilst pointing at the pedestal. Silica looks to where I'm pointing and spots the pedestal as well. We both walk up to it and wait.

"Nothing's happening." Silica said impatiently.

"Wait for it…" As soon as I say that a flower starts to bloom right on the pedestal at a rapid rate. When it was finished blooming silica tapped the flower for its name.

"This is it! It's the Pneuma flower!" She said excitedly. She immediately places it in her inventory.

"We should probably wait till we get back to the inn to revive Pina." She nods enthusiastically. Then, a low rumble reminded me what we were supposed to do her. "Oh yeah. Lunchtime!" I pulled out two sandwiches that I got from the leader of the assault team, Asuna." She's the second in command of The Knights of the Blood Oath and she's an amazing cook. Almost as good as Nina. Then again, I might be a bit biased because I have Nina's food almost every day. She gave me the sandwiches as a reward for doing so well in the last boss raid. She gave some to everyone actually. She must really love cooking in this game, or is trying really hard to max out her cooking level. I give one sandwich to Silica and keep the other one for myself. My first bite into the sandwich is an explosion of flavor. It's a reminder why Asuna is known as a master chef by the assault team. Silica has a shocked reaction during her first bite.

"Wow! This is amazing! Did you make this?" She asked me with huge admiration in her eyes.

"Unfortunately no. This was made by the second in command of The Knights of the Blood Oath. She just gave some to me as a job well done on the last boss raid." She didn't have the same admiration as before, but she was still impressed.

"It tastes just like food in the real world. She's a really awesome cook to pull something like this off. I got to learn how to do this."

"Maybe I can try to introduce her to you one of these days. I'm on the assault team so I work with her a lot." I don't know why I said that. Asuna was really serious and uptight the last time we did a boss raid. I just get nervous talking to people who I don't know or isn't very friendly. Of course, I've tried to overcome it being a co-commander of the Warhawk guild. I have to talk to all sorts of people. I hide the fact that I'm nervous about it though pretty well.

"That'd be great! I can't wait to meet her." I really got to abide by my cousin's golden rule. 'don't make a promise you can't keep'. After finishing lunch, we start to head back to Florem's main town. We've defeated most of the monsters on the way so there shouldn't be any on the path back yet. It's with this knowledge that I know it's not a monster that I detect on the way back. I put my arm out in front of Silica to stop her. I think I know who it is.

"Whoever's hiding, you can come out now." A few seconds pass and nothing happened. I heard Silica mumble something indiscernible to herself. Probably wondering what I saw that made me stop her. As soon as she finished mumbling though someone came out. Another player, and a familiar one at that.

"Wow you must have a really good detection skill if you can notice me." Said the all too familiar Rosalia. She has a green cursor over her head but I know that's a trick. Time to get to work on that favor.

[Silica's POV]

I had no idea why Rosalia was here right now. I figured that DJ had a high detection skill but I didn't think he would detect another player. I thought another trap monster appeared.

"So you're the leader of the murder guild, Titan's Hand." That was a bad conclusion. It didn't even make sense. She has a green icon over her head.

"Wow, so you figured it out huh?" She didn't deny it? How can she be the leader of a murder guild with a green cursor?

"But, she has a green cursor." I exclaimed.

"It's a simple trick. A green player leads a group of unsuspecting players into a trap with red players. The red players do the killing and the green player just spectates because in order for it to work that player needs to keep the green cursor." DJ's explanation allows me to understand the situation better. Then I got to thinking.

"So the party I was with earlier." Rosalia gave a menacing smile and chuckle.

"I figured I might as well get some spoils from the group before we killed them and the goods were lost." I covered my face in shock when she said that. Those guys were just trying to get some materials. Instead they were murdered by this guild. The fact she says we only means one thing too. "Come on out boys!" At her command, multiple players appear from the surrounding foliage. All of them, have an orange cursor. I cower behind DJ.

"What do we do?" I ask. He turns to me and gives me a teleport crystal.

"Things start to go south; you teleport out of here without hesitation." I shake my head.

"No way. I can't leave you here like that to be at the mercy of these player killers." He chuckled.

"Who said I would be at their mercy?" He nudges me back further as he starts to walk up confidently towards the other players. He readies his spear at his side. It's the same one I gave him for Christmas intensely upgraded.

"Just who do you think you are? Take him boys." A good 7 players charged towards DJ. He just stood there waiting for their attacks. The closer the players got, the more scared I became. One hand gravitated to my dagger in case one of them decides to attack me. The first player made contact with DJ, then another, and another. I wanted to turn away. DJ wasn't doing anything to defend himself. Then I noticed his health bar. For the little damage the players were able to do to him, he instantly got healed to full health. He was practically invincible. They kept attacking for a few minutes before they became tired from their relentless assault. When they saw DJ still standing, relatively unscathed, they started to back away. Rosalia was at a loss for words as was I.

"Is that the best you got?" DJ said confidently.

"What the hell! Kill him you idiots!" Rosalia commanded in anger.

"I'm level 70. I have a health regen skill that heals me for 600 HP every 15 seconds. More than what you guys can do to me in that same amount of time." This could go on all day and nothing would happen." One of the players went wide eyed.

"Level 70? You're on the assault team!"

"That's right, and because I'm such a high level I'm basically invincible to you guys. Levelling systems are unfair that way." The players back away further when DJ confirms he's on the assault team.

"You can't kill us. You'll go orange." Rosalia exclaims.

"I'm offended that you'd think I would kill you. No, I actually planned to put you in prison." As he says that he pulls out a crystal. "This is a Corridor Crystal, and it goes to the Black Iron Palace's prison. The leader of the Silver Fangs, the guild you slaughtered not to long ago, spent the entire guild's funds on this. Hoping to bring you to justice." The members of Titan's Hand were frozen unsure of what to do. DJ took the opportunity to activate the crystal. "Enjoy prison." He said before the players got teleported to the prison that DJ mentioned. After everything was said and done he turned to me. "Sorry about that."

"About what?"

"The confrontation with the guild. I didn't mean to use you as a medium to get to them but you were already in the mix when you partied with Rosalia." He then said under his breath but still loud enough for me to hear. "Maybe now my cousin will stop letting other people not in the guild party up with those in out guild." There was an obvious tone of anger and frustration in his voice. The other members of my party were a part of the Warhawk guild. We lost fellow guild members to player killers.

"At least we stopped one red guild." DJ nodded.

"Yeah, but there are plenty more out there." I still had the teleport crystal he gave me in my hand and I gestured to give it back to him but he refused. "You can keep it. There aren't a lot of times I have to teleport anyway. Besides, I'll always find more." DJ gave me a smile and I complied with his request by putting the crystal in my inventory.

"How did this come about anyway?" I asked wanting to know.

"Well, when I was getting the gear made for you I ran into the leader of the Silver Fangs guild. He wanted my help with bringing the Titan's Hand guild to justice after killing the rest of his guild. Thankfully, crafting doesn't take long to do and I was able to get your gear done quickly. He said that the leader was named Rosalia and it just so happened that you were partied with her for the day. I wanted to get to you before anything bad happened. I was actually really relieved when I found that you left the party. When you told me that you had issues with Rosalia I figured you would be a special target for her. When she'd strike, the rest of her guild would be with her and I would try to get them all into prison, which I just did." He sighed. "I pretty much used you to reach my own goal and I apologize for that. thigs could've went bad and you would have been caught in the middle." I shook my head.

"No! You stopped people from killing others. I don't even consider what you did using me. You actually saved me from getting killed by Rosalia. I'm grateful for that." I gave him a hug to try and set him at ease. He returns it.

"Thank you Silica. I have a habit of beating myself up over something that isn't a big deal." We stayed like that for several seconds before pulling away. "Let's head back to the inn." I nod in agreement and we start to head to the teleport pad in the safe zone of Florem.

Upon arrival at the inn, we both got a room. This time, it's the same one. When we got inside we both changed out of our armor and into our normal nightwear. No we did not change in front of each other. I used the bathroom and he was in the living room. Before we started to revive Pina, DJ had something to say.

"Hey Silica."

"Yes?"

"I, um, had a great time with you today in the dungeon. I was wondering if we could do that more often. It's a lot faster than your current way of doing things." I thought about it for a moment.

"I'd love to do that more often. Spending time with you is amazing." He smiled.

"Good to know, and one more thing." He started to open his menu. "There was one more piece of equipment I got for you." He generated a box for a ring out of his inventory. He did a took a deep breath before going further. What happened next caught me off guard. "This might be just a game but I truly feel something when I hang out with you. Something that I can't explain. After talking to my cousin and Nina about it a lot, I've come to realize that the feeling is love. I love you Silica." He opened the box and showed me a beautiful ring. He put his arms out to me and the ring was inches from me. "Would you marry me Silica." There it was. The question that came with the presentation of a ring. I was speechless, unable to say what I wanted to, which was…

"Yes. I will." I know it's a game but we've been trapped in here for so long it feels like it's a way of life. When I said yes, DJ's expression was ecstatic. He placed the ring on my finger and I noticed that it was an actual item that gave stat boosts. He equipped one that he made for himself as well. In the heat of the moment he gave me a kiss on the lips. I was shocked at first but I returned the kiss. Out tongues were dancing in eachother's mouths like a ritual. It lasted a good ten seconds before we separated.

"I love you Silica."

"I love you DJ."

"Why don't we revive Pina so we can share the news with her." I nodded in agreement and got Pina's heart and the flower out of my inventory. "Pour the nectar on Pina's heart and it should revive her. I did what he told me to do. At the time all I could think about was telling Pina that I fell in love. Some might call me crazy for falling for someone I met in a video game, but the feelings that I felt for him were not digital, they were one hundred percent real.

 **10,000 words in total this event was. It was really fun writing this and messing around with what could happen with both characters. We hope you enjoyed it and until next time this is ragmanthemadman and companion, signing off.**


	8. Lost party part 1

**We're back again with another chapter. We were hoping to get this done sooner, but college just wouldn't let us take a summer break. We're glad you guys enjoyed the last chapter. Bonus! 2,000 views. The support is amazing on this. We're glad you guys are enjoying this story. On that note, enjoy this chapter.**

[Max's POV]

"God damn it!" I screamed whilst slamming my hands on the table. I was at the main building of our guild when DJ told me his findings on some of our missing members. Needless to say, I wasn't happy. At the people who did it, and at myself for letting it happen. DJ left to go on a dungeon raid with Silica. I'm glad those two got married.

"Hey calm down. This won't help your condition you know." Nina said. I know she's right, but people died on my watch. That's not something I wanted to ever happen to anyone let alone guild members. Part of me feels like I failed them.

"But they died. Members of our guild died because I was so open with it. Allowing pretty much anyone to join and hang out. I can see why the U.S. has strict laws on public buildings like airports. Without it, anyone can just waltz in and fuck shit up." She looked like she was about to start a rebuttal, but couldn't think of anything to say.

"What do you suggest that we do." I shrugged my shoulders.

"That's just it I don't know. I want to leave it open to everyone but then again I don't want something like that to happen again." I thought about it for a moment and came up with something. "I'm going to have to limit who can join on some guild parties. Which means I gotta figure out what guilds are shady and which ones aren't. For those that aren't in guilds, I'm gonna see if a high-level player can accompany the party. That way, if the player attempts to do something, someone can stop it." It's not a perfect plan but it's the only one I can think of that still leaves the guild open to everyone.

"Not bad. I'll help you with that research too."

"I'm sure Argo can help out in giving us some info as well. We'll have to pay her of course but that shouldn't be an issue. We have plenty of funds."

"That we do, but this can wait. We have a request from the leader of the knights of the blood oath. He said to see him as soon as we could." I forgot that Heathcliff wanted to see us. He and I don't chat much unless it's official business. There's just something about him I don't like. He's one of the older players in this game and he tends to send others out to do his work, even though he's very skillful at this game and could easily do those tasks himself. Then again, there is a level requirement in his guild. Maybe he does that to make sure everyone stays at a decent level.

"Do we have to? Not exactly looking forward to meeting with Heathcliff."

"Of course we do. Maybe we get to work with Asuna again." Asuna has a tough exterior personality, but on the inside, she's a nice person who cares a lot about others. Ask anyone under her command, however, and you'll get tons of responses saying that she's strict and all about business.

"I hope we do. She's the only one I actually like partying with from the Knights of the Blood Oath." I started to head out the building and Nina followed.

"Maybe she'll have more food for us."

"That'd be great. Her food is amazing." Then Nina gave me a glare. "Your food is great too." I said throwing my hands up in innocence. Nina has been trying to learn how to cook in this game. She's a great cook in real life and when I told her there was a cooking skill in this game she was all over it. Sometimes, she and Asuna have cooking contests, and I'll be honest, the real winner, is the one tasting those dishes. They're both so good, it's hard to pick who's better of the two. If it wasn't for the fact they fight on the front lines, they would definitely be chefs at a restaurant.

"Good, otherwise I won't cook your dinner tonight." I didn't even know she was planning on making dinner tonight. It's a treat that I savor every time she does so.

"That's just mean. You know I love your cooking. Asuna's just on par with you. Honestly, heaven would be a meal prepared by the both of you." She pondered that idea for a second.

"That's a great idea. We'll arrange that eventually."

"That'd be great. I'll be looking forward to it." She chuckled a bit at that.

We continued to the center of town where the teleport pad is.

"Teleport Granzam" We both said simultaneously. The blue light engulfed my vision and dissipated in an instant. In that same instance, I was teleported to the town of Granzam. Well actually, Granzam is pretty much a fort that's occupied by none other than the Knights of the Blood Oath.

"Here we are." Nina said.

"Yeah." I sighed. "Let's get this over with." We both head inside the fort and up to the council room. Oh yeah, Heathcliff has a council of like five people, including himself, that act like generals for the guild. People would normally be stopped by some form of security by now, but the Warhawk guild does so much business with the Knights of the Blood Oath that we're practically a part of the guild ourselves. Upon arrival at the council room, the council of five were already there, including Heathcliff. What I didn't expect, was Asuna standing on the side. Maybe we will get to work with her.

"Hello, Ragman and Nina. Thank you for meeting with us." Heathcliff said in his serious tone. I don't know why he's like that most of the time.

"Thank you for having us, but I assume that you called us here on business." I responded. Heathcliff nodded.

"Yes, I did." He leaned forward and put his hands under his chin. "We lost contact with one of our recruitment parties who were going to a string of dungeons to level up."

"That's not our problem. Why are you dragging us into this?"

"Figured you'd question it. Well, we sent out a party to look for them and we lost contact with them as well. I figured I'd ask for help for some of the top tier players of the game. Asuna will be working with you." He gestured to her and she waved at us. "What better team to do this than the fo…" he paused when he realized there was one missing from my party. "Where's your other second in command?"

"He's on another assignment."

"That's too bad, I was hoping that the four of you would be able to do this. I'll have to find someone el…"

"We can do it with just the three of us." Nina spoke out of the blue. I shot her a quick look of confusion before I turned back to Heathcliff."

"If that's not an issue for you guys then that would be great. Asuna knows the dungeons they hit. She can lead you around Aincrad to get to them." It's clear now that I can't talk my way out of this.

"Understood. We'll get it done." I said. We all said our goodbyes headed out of Granzam. The first dungeon was on the same floor. So we headed there first. On the way, we struck a conversation. "Why did you just blurt out that we would get it done? I was going to see if someone else could do it but you made it impossible for me to do that."

"I wanted to show him that we could do something like this. He's been making us do tedious tasks for a while now. This is the first major assignment that he asked us to do. I figured, if we do a good job, he'll give us more of the jobs."

"I don't like the idea of sucking up to him."

"I don't either, but he is in charge of the biggest guild in SAO. I'd rather be on his good side. You never know what this game has in store for us. It could make everyone turn against each other and we would be forced to make enemies and allies, If it came to that, I want Heathcliff as an ally." That was an extreme idea.

"I highly doubt that SAO would go there. Nevertheless, I prefer to get along with those I do business with."

"You know that I'm right here right?" Asuna says, even though we already knew she was there.

"We know. You were free to comment you know." I said. I figured that she would have commented by now with how open she can be with things she doesn't agree with.

"You don't disagree with us, that's why you don't say anything." Asuna opened her mouth to refute the statement but quickly closed it.

"Wait, she's right?" Asuna shrugged.

"I don't really agree with how Heathcliff runs things, but I can't really complain about it. I'm his second in command, and so far he hasn't done anything too bad. Actually, he made me, and every other leader, have an escort when they're not already in a party."

"Oh, so he does care for his members. That's not the impression I got from him." I responded. Asuna shrugged.

"He can give off the impression of not caring but let me assure you that he does. The way he shows his caring, however, is questionable." That explains her little dislike of Heathcliff.

After that short conversation, we found ourselves in front of the first dungeon that they visited. We made our way through the dungeon, looking for clues as to what happened to the two parties. We fought some monsters on the way but it was nothing we couldn't handle. We made it to the end where we saw a named boss. Normally, we would go into this with a plan, but we've already beaten the monster before and it's a piece of cake with the gear and skills we have now. Even after beating the boss, though, we weren't able to find any clues to their whereabouts. We headed to the second dungeon and did the same thing. Nothing. On route to the third dungeon, we struck another conversation.

"How many dungeons did they go see?" I asked to no one in particular.

"Three."Asuna responded. I nodded in response. That meant, the dungeon we're going to is the last one that they were told to go to.

When we arrived it was like clockwork. We checked around the whole dungeon from top to bottom to try and find clues. We went quickly and efficiently. The boss, again, gave us no problems. After the boss fight, though, we found what we were looking for.

"This is a quest, item." I exclaimed. Nina and Asuna came to me to look at the item.

"What's it for?" Nina asked.

"It's a map, for a secret dungeon that's five floors up." I responded.

"That could explain why they haven't come back yet." Asuna reasoned.

"You think they're chasing after the quest?" Nina asked.

"It's possible but it doesn't explain why they didn't communicate to anyone about it." I shook my head. "We gotta investigate this further."

"Agreed. Heathcliff won't be happy if we don't give him a concrete answer to these guy's whereabouts." Asuna exclaims.

"There's only one problem." Nina said.

"What?" Asuna and I say simultaneously. Nina opens her menu.

"It's almost seven. We all know that monsters become more dangerous and stronger at night."

"That's true. we shouldn't make this harder on ourselves that we have to." Asuna says.

"How about we go to an inn on the same floor as the dungeon. That way we'll be right there and we can get an early start." I say.

"Great idea!" The said at the same time. You'd think that we could read each other's minds with the number of times that happens.

We head five floors up to a safe zone that's not far from the dungeon according to the map. Nothing really happened on the way. When we got to the inn though I was told something that took me by surprise.

"Asuna and I are going to have our own room." Nina told me.

"Really? Tired of me already." She punched me in the shoulder.

"Idiot. It's not like that. Asuna doesn't have a roommate. I was going to keep her company."

"Then why don't we all get one room."Asuna immediately blushed when I said that. When I saw her do that I immediately revoked my statement. "Nevermind."

"Oh, you can go one night without me, right?" I rubbed the back of my head.

"It'll be hard but…. I think I'll manage." I said a bit exaggerative. I got a kiss on the cheek for my effort.

"You'll be fine." She grabbed Asuna's arm and pulled her upstairs toward her room. "See you later!" She said without looking back. The patrons at the inn were staring, wondering what's causing the commotion. Unfortunately, they looked in my direction. I'm not the biggest fan of attention. I just looked down and walked towards my room which happened to be next door to theirs. I thought I was done for the day, and even got into more comfortable clothing, then I realized… I was hungry, borderline starving. We've barely eaten all day. So what do I do? I head to the girl's room to see if they want dinner. I knocked on their door first and waited.

No response.

I try again.

No response.

Third times the charm, right?

Nope, still no response. I was about to give up until I heard a scream. I assumed they were in danger so I opened the door. I was able to because my in-game wife, Nina, was inside the room. Locked doors can be bypassed this way. It's almost like she gives me a key to any room she uses.

"Hey, you guys ok?" I exclaim upon my entrance. As I scan the room, though, it becomes obvious no ones here. At least, not the bedroom/living room portion. I scan the kitchen really quick and there's no one there either. That only leaves…

"Ah! That's better." The bathroom. Unfortunately for me, both Asuna and Nina come out of there. No clothes, no towels, completely nude. The smart thing to do was look away.

I'm not all that smart.

I took in every detail. Asuna's flawless, light skin. Her perky, smooth breasts. Her natural curves. And her smooth vagina. The fact that she just came out of the bath meant that her body was dripping wet.

Then there was Nina. Her skin, like Asuna's, was flawless and light. Her large, and perfectly round breasts. Her natural curves. And, yet again, a smooth vagina. Again, her body was dripping wet. These two have very similar features… besides the bust.

And then… they noticed me.

"AAAHHH!" They both screamed whilst covering their body with their arms as best as they could. Mainly their private regions. In both their cases, it just showed how big their bust was. Of course, that was also the time I decided to finally look away.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?" Nina yells at the top her lungs. I keep my head looking away whilst putting my hands up in non-hostility.

"I was just going to ask if you guys wanted to get dinner. We barely ate all day.

"Why didn't you knock first?" She responded in a harsh, angered tone.

"I did. Then I heard a scream and I thought something was wrong so I came in. We are husband and wife in-game." There was no response after that, and I knew if I peaked again they would kill me… literally.

"Don't look." She said sternly. I complied of course. I'd like to get out of this _alive_. I heard some things materialize, which I assumed was their clothes. You can look now. I slowly open my eyes and turn my head. Both Asuna and Nina had on a nightgown. When I saw they were clothed I put my hands down. Nina whispered something to Asuna and after she said what she had to, Asuna nodded and went to the bathroom. When she closed the door, Nina stared daggers at me. "You got ten seconds to explain what the hell you were thinking by coming in here." Up goes my hands in an attempt to defuse the situation.

"I got hungry and I wanted to know if you guys were as well so I came to your room. I knocked three times and was about to go away, but then I heard a scream, so I entered the room because I thought you guys were in trouble. I had no clue you were in the shower, I swear." She squinted her eyes like she was scanning me like a lie detector. When she was satisfied she relaxed her gaze a little.

"Ok, I believe you, but, don't do something like that again. Especially when there's another female in the room other than me." When she finished grilling me, she responded to my first question. "Now that you mention it, I am a bit famished." That statement was reinforced by an angry growl from her stomach.

"Judging by that sound I think you're more than a bit famished." She blushed a bit for that one.

"Don't make fun of me." She then came up to my ear and whispered. "Unless you don't want me and Asuna to cook." She knows how much I love both of their cooking. When they cook together, who knows how good their food will taste.

"Ok, no more jokes." She smirked like she claimed victory in our conversation. Not that there was much to be won, other than bragging rights… maybe.

"Good. Now, go back to your room until the food is finished cooking." Then she pointed at me and stressed, "I'll message you when it's done." That's a safe bet.

"Ok. I won't come back until I get that message." She smiles.

"Good." She then proceeds to shove me out of the door. "See you soon." She says in her girliest voice possible whilst closing the door in my face. I just went back to my room and laid down on my bed. I couldn't think of anything to do so I just kept replaying the moment when I saw them coming out the bathroom over and over again. It's hard not to considering that it's something that most guys dream of happening to them. would've been better if they didn't find out about it and scold me afterward. Then I remembered why I went in the room in the first place, that scream. I had no clue what the reason behind it was. I had my ideas, but I decided to wait until dinner to ask before coming to anything conclusive. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I got a message from Nina.

 _Dinner's ready._

To humor myself a bit, I sent a message back to her.

 _Are you sure that I can come inside the room this time?_

 _Yes, we're clothed._

 _Aww, I was hoping for another show._

 _One, you're a pervert, two, maybe if you're well behaved, you'll get one when this is over._

"That's not fair. I was trying to mess with you and you turn it around back at me."

 _I'll be good. I'm on my way over._

I love messing with her sometimes. Ever since we got married, more and more lewd things have happened. Most of the time, it was by accident. Sometimes, though, it's happened on purpose. When she says I'm a pervert, I somewhat am, but only to her. Mainly because she lets me, and It's hard not to. She's really sexy.

I arrive at the ladies' room and knocked on the door.

"Come in!" Nina calls out. I walked inside and the smell of food hit me hard. It was a pleasant smell that had me salivating for the meal to come. Looking around, I noticed Nina lying on the bed and Asuna in the kitchen making the finishing touches on the food. Nina was doing something concerning her inventory. I was just standing at the door wondering what to do. Nina, noticing my lack of movement, motions me over to her. "Come sit next to me, food's almost done."

"I thought you said it was done."

"It is, Asuna's just putting the finishing touches on it." Asuna always wants her food to look, and taste good. Nina too, but she's not as intense as Asuna.

"Whatcha doing with your inventory?"

"Oh, I'm just wondering if any drops we picked up are actually good. So far, it's all just going to be turned into Col." I would've done the same thing, but I knew that all the drops I got were nowhere near the strength of my current gear. As soon as I get to a shop, I'm selling all of these items. I opened my inventory to see how much money I had on my character. 4,234,450 Col just sitting in my 'pockets' collecting virtual dust. It sucks knowing I'll probably never get this much money in real life. I would spend it, but the best equipment are dropped most of the time, and I don't take enough time off to buy a house. Although, with the way boss fights are becoming lately, I might just entertain that thought.

"All done!" Asuna called from the kitchen holding a plate of rice with meat and vegetables. The way she aligned them, though, it made it look like it was from a fancy, five-star restaurant. I practically had a waterfall coming out of my mouth when I saw that. Nina and Asuna, cooking together, only means that something amazing will be the outcome. Asuna gave the first plate to me, then went back and brought two more plates for Nina and herself.

"Thank you for the food." I said to both of them. I didn't even hear a response because I was scarfing the food down.

"Geez, have some etiquette why don't you." I finished chewing and swallowed what was in my mouth before responding.

"Sorry, but you guys can really cook, and I can't control myself when I'm presented with good food."

"It's true. He's like this in the real world too." Nina said. Asuna got a chuckle out of it.

"Really?" She sat down on the bed opposite us.

"Yeah. It's his way of saying thank you." I looked up with my mouth full of food and gave a nod, which got another chuckle out of the girls. Almost immediately after I heard them laugh, I remember when they screamed before I came into the room earlier.

"Hey, what did you guys scream about before I came in the room?" Asuna almost choked on her food when I asked that, and her face went cherry red. It was a pretty embarrassing moment for her. Nina calmly answered my question, though.

"Well, we were taking a bath. And, Asuna was a bit embarrassed from being in one together. So, I got a little frisky to try and relax her a bit, and I may have gone a bit too far." In my mind, I was like

 _Oh… oohhhh… OOHHHHH!_

Of course, the only thing I could do was nod in understanding. "Got it." I managed to say. The conversation went stale for a couple minutes after that. No one said anything until Nina broke the silence.

"So, Asuna, you're from Japan?" Asuna nodded. That was a first for me. I didn't know that's where she was from. Then again, the game was developed in Japan and I was one of the very small number of Americans who got their hands on the game. So it makes sense that most of the player base is Japanese. But then, that raised a question.

"So do you speak Japanese." She looks at me curiously and nods again, a bit slower this time.

"Wait, what? But you're speaking English to us." She looks at us even more curiously.

"I'm speaking Japanese. Although, I do know some English." I wanted to test something.

"Try speaking it."

"Hello, how you doing?" She said with uncertainty and with trouble pronouncing the words.

"Now say the same thing in Japanese.

"Hello, how are you doing." That time was more fluent and more correct.

"I think I know what's happening. When we first started this game it asked us what language we preferred. At first, I thought it was for NPC's talking to us. Now, I think that the game has an automatic translator that translates a variety of languages to yours. Judging by the quality of your English, and the fact that your voice is the same during the translation, it's a really high tech program." 

"That makes a lot of sense actually. You're going to have to work with other players if you want to clear the game, and you can't do that if you can't understand one another. So, the game just effectively gets rid of the language barrier between players." The more I thought about it, the cooler everything sounded. Then Asuna yawned.

"I take it you want to head to bed now." I said to her.

"Well we were in dungeons all day today and it is getting a bit late, plus, we have more work to do tomorrow, so yeah I would like to get some sleep." In other words, I had to leave. I placed my plate in the sink and went to head out the door.

"Have a good night you two." I was about to head out the door, but Nina held me back and gave me a passionate kiss. It lasted a couple of seconds and then she pulled off.

"Goodnight babe." She's been calling me babe a lot lately. I just smile like an idiot and head off to my room to turn in for the night.

In the middle of the night, I awoke with a start. Not sure what startled me, but I do know that when I awoke, my chest was tight and in pain. I was drenched in virtual sweat, and my breathing was a bit labored.

 _Damnit, breathe slowly. Concentrate._ I kept thinking to myself. I tried to slow my breathing and get myself calm. It took a minute, but I was eventually able to calm down, and make my chest stop hurting. _I was hoping that this wouldn't affect me here. unfortunately, it looks like it will._ That was my last thought before I went back to sleep.

 **I apologize for the late update. My internet has not been cooperating for the past week. Also, I've started using Grammarly, so mistakes shouldn't be as bad as before. Hope you guys enjoyed and until next time this is Ragmanthemadman and companion, signing off.**


	9. Lost Party part 2

**Part two of our mini adventures is here. Why do you guys are enjoying the story so far, we've been working hard on it in between our daily lives. I start going back to school soon so updates may be less frequent. It all depends on the amount of schoolwork I get. If it becomes too much my girlfriend will take the lead on the story. Hopefully, that will be the case because I like working on this as much as she does. I find it a productive use of my time having fun is just a bonus. Anyways I hope you guys enjoy.**

[Max's POV]

The next morning came, I wondered if what happened last night was just a dream. But in the back of my mind I knew wasn't. It's something I've dealt with for the majority of my life. But part of me hoped that it wouldn't transfer into his game. But somehow I knew it would when I found out that this would be a death game. No one needs to know, though, if they find out I might be treated differently as if I was handicapped. I don't want that especially here. I want to contribute to the ending. And people might not think highly of me if they knew what my condition was. So I'll keep it to myself and if they happen to see one of my episodes then I'll explain it. That is if I'm alive to do so.

I met with the girls in the lobby of the Inn. They were serving breakfast. So we decided to have some. As they were eating, Nina noticed I Wasn't As talkative as I normally am.

"Ragman are you okay?" I was caught off guard by the question. She knows about my condition, but I don't want her to know that it can affect me in this game too. So I tried to play it off.

"Yeah, I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night." She glared at me

"It wasn't because you are thinking about what happened last night where you?" She was referring to when I caught her and Asuna coming out of the bath. This was reinforced by Asuna's blushing.

"No, I wasn't thinking about that… Much." I scratched the back of my head. It's true I wasn't thinking about it much, but the fact I thought about it at all made me feel ashamed and embarrassed. Nina shook her head.

"For shame. I thought you were better than that." I shrugged. What did she expect? I'm a guy, most dream of having that happen to them. And I actually had it happen to me. Of course, I'm reminiscing about it.

"Can we change the subject?" Asuna asked with rosy cheeks. It was clear she was not comfortable with this conversation. I nodded my head.

"Okay, let's talk about what we're going to do today." Asuna was the first to speak up.

"Well, we have a map to the hidden dungeon. We are going to see if something happened while they were there."

"Just to be clear, we know for a fact are not dead." I said.

"They're alive. Their names are still on my friend's list. If they were dead it would just show as a bunch of question marks."

"I knew that I don't have them on my friend's list so I wouldn't know if they were alive or not." I remember when Kirito told me that he stopped adding friends because he would have to remove the ones that were dead, and that reminded him that when people died in this game they were forgotten. That's not entirely true, though, in the Town of Beginnings, there is a Memorial that has the names of those who died. They may be deleted from our friend's list but they are not forgotten. If it wasn't for some of my members dying I wouldn't have known what it felt like to lose someone. It makes me fear for Nina's and DJ's lives more.

"If they're not dead then all we have to do is find them." Nina interjected. I shook my head

"We might as well clear our schedules then. Finding someone lost in SAO is extremely hard, especially when there are 60 plus floors to hide on."

"At least we have a lead. That dungeon is our best bet of finding a trace to their location." Asuna reasons. We all nod our heads in agreement.

"Then we should get going." I said while finishing up my breakfast. Nina and Asuna were done with their breakfast too. We all headed out the Inn and followed the map towards the hidden dungeon.

When we arrived there wasn't much there, at least to the naked eye. The map let us to a wall, there didn't look like there was an entrance to said dungeon.

"Dead-end, dammit." Asuna exclaimed. Under normal circumstances, I would've believed her, but I felt like that something was off. I walked up to the wall and started feeling around with my hand. All I felt was a bunch of bumps that seemed random at first, but upon closer inspection, I realized that the dots were actually braille.

"Guys feel this." I said whilst motioning them over. The girls started to rub their hands on the wall.

"It's just a bunch of bumps." Nina said.

"Yeah what's so special about that?"

"It's actually braille." They looked at me with shock.

"And you can understand it?" Asuna asked.

"I dabble. I used to help tutor special ed kids. In order to do so, I had to understand a little bit of braille. While I may not have a direct translation for this…" I motioned towards the dots. "… I understand enough to know what we have to do next."

"Which is…" Nina asked. I open my menu and drop a sword I was going to sell.

"We have to give up a weapon. Hope you guys have one that you don't mind getting rid of." No sooner than I say that, the girls drop weapons that they don't need. "I guess you do." The weapons start digitizing and eventually disappear. When they do door opens inside the wall. "Let me go first." I enter with my shield raised and my weapon drawn. The girls funnel in behind me. As soon as we're all inside the door closes behind us. "Nina check if the door opens." No matter how hard Nina tried she couldn't get the door open

"It's no good we can't go out this way." That was unsettling, to say the least.

"Try a teleport crystal." I said. Asuna tried it.

"Teleport Granzam." We waited for a few seconds but nothing happened. "That's no good either." That was one possible mystery solved. We had no choice but to continue forward. For a dungeon, there weren't many monsters, actually, there weren't any. There were plenty of traps, though. Lucky for us, Nina was very adept at trap recognition. We were able to avoid all of them for the most part. There wasn't much to say about the dungeon until we arrived at the end.

"Another dead end?" Nina said.

"Looks like it." I said I heard something snap behind us and immediately turned to face my shield toward whoever was coming. The light was dim in the dungeon but I was able to make out the white uniform. "You with the Knights of the Blood Oath?" The person in front of me nodded. I looked toward Asuna for confirmation.

"He's one of us." I sheathed my sword and relaxed.

"Thank goodness you guys found us. We found the other squad here as well they didn't have a lot of provisions so we gave them some of ours. But now are starting to run out we only have a couple days left." That was unsettling to hear, and with the lack of monsters here you can't farm for food either. Lucky for us we have a decent amount of food with us along with materials to cook. But even that will run out.

"Can you take us to the others?" Asuna asked. He nodded and motioned for us to follow him. He led us to a hallway with two rooms across from each other. One room had 10 males in it the other had four females. I know we were looking for two squads, but I didn't think that there were fourteen people between the two of them. Everyone in their rooms was relaxing, most likely waiting for someone to get them. Asuna whispered in my ear. "This is bad, even with the extra supplies we have, we'll run out in a couple days." I nodded in understanding at our current situation. I decided to speak up.

"All right, can someone explain to me what you figured out on how to get out of this dungeon." I grabbed everyone's attention, but no one spoke up. "Are you telling me you guys just sat on your ass hoping someone would get you out?" I saw a couple heads nod. At least they're honest. I shook my head. I motioned Nina and Asuna over to me. I lowered my voice. "It's clear that these guys didn't put much effort into their escape. As much as I hate picking up their slack, if we're going to survive we need to find a way out of here." They nodded in understanding. "For now, we give them some supplies so they can eat for today. I'm going to try to investigate and see if I can find any clues to our way out." They nodded in understanding of the plan and went to help them with their supplies. Meanwhile, I investigate around the dead-end part of the dungeon. Not that there was much to investigate. There were a couple rooms near the dead-end, so I investigated to see if there were any clues. I saw some braille on the wall and deciphered it. It was just a couple numbers and they appeared to be random. I turned around to head to the other room for skeleton soldier to appear in front of me and knock me out.

When I came to I was in another room with Nina sleeping beside me. She must've found me and brought me back to our little settlement. It made me wonder how long I was out for. I Thought I ruled out monsters being in here. So what the fuck hit me? I shook Nina in an attempt to wake her up. Had no luck. She is such a heavy sleeper. I gave up trying to wake her. I felt rested, so I decided to head back to I was so I can try and get out of here. I knew however that going alone again was not a smart idea. Nina wasn't waking up so there was only one other person that I trusted, Asuna. Across from our room was Asuna's. I knocked on the stone around the entrance to see if she was already awake.

"Come in." I heard her say. That answered my question. I walked inside and saw her sitting on a rock going through her inventory. She looked up and saw me she smiled. "Glad to see you're finally awake." She said with a smile. I cringed when she said finally. She made it seem like I was out for a long time.

"How long was I out?" She pondered that thought for a bit.

"Several hours. On the bright side, you were one less mouth to feed." Wasn't sure whether or not to take that as a compliment. "After a couple hours of not hearing from you, we went out to try and find you. When we did you were out cold. We figured that because you didn't get enough sleep you just collapsed." They didn't see the monster that I saw or thought I saw. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination and I really was just tired.

"That's possible, I don't really remember what happened. Anyway, now that I've gotten rest I'm going to head back and try to get us out I think I was onto something last time. Would you mind coming with?" She closed her inventory and stood up.

"Sure, it'll give me something to do." We both left the room and went to the end of the dungeon. I went back to the room that I found the braille in, and tried to make sense of the numbers.

"Eight and twenty-four." Asuna got behind me to see what I was doing.

"More braille?" I nodded.

"Yeah, but I don't know what the numbers mean."

"Hmm, maybe it's part of a pattern?" She had a point.

"It's possible, but I can't pinpoint the pattern with just two numbers." I walked to the room across from us to see if there was anything more. I felt around the wall, hoping there would be more braille. Luckily, there was. "Four and ninety-six." More numbers that again seemed random.

"Any idea what it means?" I had to think of the numbers I already found. I put them in order from least to greatest and tried to find a pattern between them. It didn't take long to discover something.

"They're all multiples of each other, but that's not the whole pattern. The number they're are multiplied by increases by one each time." Asuna looked confused. "For example four times two is eight, eight times three is twenty-four, and so on." Asuna understood better now.

"That's good but how does that help us get out of here." I walked to the end of the dungeon hallway.

"I bet there's more braille on his door to tell us what to do." I noticed there was a reel with three zeros on it. There was more braille next to it. "It says 'put the next number'."

"Wouldn't that be ninety-six times five." I nodded. "Give me a second." Asuna started counting with her fingers. I didn't do that. I was able to do the math in my head rather quickly. As soon as I figured it out I spun the reel.

"4-8-0" I whispered to myself as I put the numbers in. As soon as I put the last number in the door rumbled open. It snapped Asuna out of her work.

"How did you do that so fast?"

"I've always been good at math. This wasn't too difficult for me to do." The sound of the door opening drew everyone over here.

"You guys found a way out?" One of the guys asked. I nodded. The door actually led to another room with another door on the other side, but something looked off. It seemed like this was too easy. All it took was a little exploration and knowledge. I feel like there's something more to it than that. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get out of here." The same guy said while attempting to walk past me. I put my arm out to stop him.

"Wait, make sure you're prepared for a fight. It's not over quite yet." He gave me a questioning look but still obliged. Nina stepped out the crowd and came to me.

"What's wrong?"

"I just have a feeling that something is going to stop us from exiting. Rather be safe than sorry." I looked around to see what the group was made of. Most of them were DPS characters. There was only one other tank besides me. Not the best composition, but hopefully the fight won't be too bad. "You there." I pointed to the other take in the group.He pointed at himself and mouthed 'me'. "Yeah, come with me up in front." He cut through the group to get to me. I lowered my voice before I spoke to him. "If we do have to fight, our job is to take the damage for the others. We're the ones that are built for it." He nodded in understanding. "Everyone come in behind us. If something surprises us, we'll take the damage." Everyone understood. They flowed in behind us as we entered the room. About halfway across, after the last person entered the room, the door slammed shut behind us.

"Get ready everyone!" Asuna said drawing her rapier. Everyone else drew their weapons. We all stood together in a huddled circle. Waiting for whatever was coming to just come already. I heard something break above me and looked up to see a bunch of off-white objects falling.

"Heads!" everyone covered their heads as we were pelted with what was falling. Those who got hit only took a few points of damage. It wasn't until it was over that I realized what the items that fell were. Bones… and a lot of them. I heard a few moans and groans from various people.

"What the hell?"

"What's this?"

"If this is a trap, it's not a good one." We're just a few comments said by everyone. After everyone finished their reaction, we continued to the door. Then someone tripped. It wouldn't have been a big deal if it wasn't for the fact that the bones were moving which is what caused him to trip. The bones stockpiled in front of us and began to take shape. Bones came together like building blocks and made a creature that started at the legs and worked its way up to the head. The final product is a huge skeletal dino. The dino roared as loud as it could at us. The shockwave from the roar pushed a couple of us back. As a precaution, the other tank and I pushed up to the front of the group. Ready to take a hit if needed. The dino pulled back its claws and slashed with sheer force. The other tank and I were able to block the attack… barely. We were knocked back a little from it. If that was a basic attack, I would hate to see one of its signature skills.

"It's pretty strong." I said. What it had in attack, however, it lacked in health. It only had one bar, which was pretty surprising.

"I got this!" One of the DPS players shouted. I was completely against it. There was a feeling in my gut that there was something more to that monster.

"No, wait!" I called out, but he went ahead and attacked anyway. He slashed at the dino with full force, cutting his arm off completely. Normally, that's great, but there were a few problems. First, the monster's HP did not drop. Second, some bones came from the ground quickly and reattached to it. Third, the bones were used as a counter attack… a hard counter attack. As the bones were reattached to the dino, it hit the attacker like bullets from a gun. He was sent flying over our heads and landed behind the group. His HP was in the red. "Help get his HP back up." I commanded to the group. A couple volunteers went to help him. I noticed the other tank started to fall back visibly shaken by what just occurred. "What's wrong help me out!" The tail on the end of the dino started to glow. It was preparing to use a skill.

"I can't do it. I only became a tank because The Knights of the Blood Oath wanted to see if I could do it." Clearly, he couldn't. This attack looked like it could take out everyone in the room unless someone blocked it. Dodging it was going to be impossible as well. Even though I knew that this attack would be more powerful than its normal one, I stood my ground.

"Everyone stay as far back as you can if I fail I don't want anyone caught in the attack." Even if I did fail, I would've taken as much damage as I could so the others would be ok. At least for a bit longer. I knew I couldn't think that way, though. I had to think 'stop the attack or die'. Not just me either, everyone around me would die as well. if not to that attack, then to a future one. Most people took heed to my command to stay back but one decided to be stubborn.

"No way. I'm with you." Nina said. She's too stubborn sometimes.

"Nina listen if something goes wrong your getting caught in this hit too."

"I don't care." She put her hand on my back. "If we die, we die together." I appreciated the commitment and thought of a way for her to help.

"I want you to brace yourself against me. try to stop me from moving back at all." I heard her grunt and felt her brace her arm on my back. I knew I had to focus all my energy on blocking this attack. The dino leaped into the air and flipped very rapidly in the air. I braced myself by planting my right leg behind me and bracing my shield with my sword hand. the dino spun for a couple seconds before making an impact with my shield. Dust filled the whole room. I couldn't feel anything so part of me assumed that I was dead. Then I saw that my health bar was full. My mind is boggling, wondering how I'm alive. As the dust settled, the picture became clearer. The dino was stuck with its tail striking my shield. I successfully held my ground. The dino's bones crumbled into dust and floated away. I relaxed my stance and took a deep breath. That was way too close for my taste. I looked around and saw a shocked look on everyone's face. I would share the same look but to be honest I just wanted to get out of there. "Let's get going." I walked through the crowd and stopped next to the tank that backed out. "I became a tank because I want to be the shield that protects my loved ones. That includes friends, family, even strangers that I fight with. If you can't bring yourself to be put in harms way for those around you, don't be a tank." I got to the door and was about to open it when I saw more braille next to it. I translated what it said as well. "Impenetrable." I whispered to myself. I didn't dwell on it for long and left the dungeon with everyone else following behind.

We brought everyone back to the Knights of the Blood Oath's headquarters in Granzam. They all got settled in Nina, Asuna and me, went to debrief with Heathcliff.

"So, you found them in a hidden dungeon that they were trapped in?" We all nodded. "And they were led there by a map found at one of the dungeons I sent them to?"

"Yes sir, the last one." Asuna followed up. Heathcliff nodded.

"That's one dungeon they won't be going back to. Thank you for your help I appreciate it." Heathcliff stood up and bowed which was odd for him to do.

"No problem Heathcliff, anytime." I responded with my own bow. It's a Japanese tradition that I've had to learn quickly otherwise I would give off the wrong first impression.

"Thanks for helping guys it was a…" She noticeably blushed. "… fun time." She finished with an awkward smile. I presume it was because she thought of the night at the inn. Probably something she would rather forget.

"No problem Asuna. It was fun… mostly. We should hang out again sometime." Asuna nodded in agreement and Nina went over to hug her. When they broke apart, Nina and I turned to leave but were stopped by Heathcliff.

"Some of my guys told me that you stop an extremely powerful attack, is that true?" I didn't turn to face him, but I did respond.

"I didn't do it alone, I had help." With that said I left the fort and headed toward the teleport pad.

"I made a difference, huh?" Nina asked me. I smiled.

"If it wasn't for you, I don't think I would have been able to block that attack. So thank you." She gave me a kiss on my cheek

"You're welcome." She pulled ahead of me. "Race you to the teleport pad!" I couldn't help but laugh at how childish she was acting.

"It's not fair you get a head start. Wait up!" I said as I took off running after her. Yeah, we may be legal adults but we still act like kids.

[Heathcliff's POV]

"I'm heading home now Heathcliff." Asuna told me as she was heading out for the day.

"Alright, good work Asuna." She waved goodbye and headed out the door leaving me alone in my meeting room.

'So he found the first skill. I wonder who will find the others. I have a feeling to whom the most powerful skill will go to, but that remains to be seen. Until then I need to tend to the cardinal system and make sure that everything is working properly.' Is what I thought to myself after she left. When I created SAO, the cardinal system that it's run on was state of the art. What I didn't expect, was it to change the whole outcome of the game.

 **Things are starting to get interesting. We're giving each of the OC's special skills to try and make them more unique. We had to set this up with the story somehow, hence Heathcliff's POV. Hope you guys enjoyed. Until next time this is ragmanthemadman, and companion signing off.**


	10. Dodgems

**Hey, some changes have occurred since the last update. My girlfriend and I broke up and we haven't seen each other much since then. We were in the middle of writing the chapter when it happened. Recently, we have decided to at least stay friends so this story will continue with the both of us. If things change, I'll probably take up the story myself. It might not be her vision, but I've had thoughts on how the story will unfold. You'll know what happens later on if anything does change. Anyhow, let's get to the chapter.**

[Nina's POV]

Since our mission with Asuna, we've been pretty quiet. We've done some favors for other people as well as helping our members grow stronger. Ever since the incidents that have occurred with the Titan's Hand guild, Max has been making it a priority that everyone gets stronger. At least our combatants. The ones that are in the guild but don't fight too much aren't required to do so, but for those that do it is highly encouraged that they do. It was just another dungeon run. I was in charge of it while Max and DJ were with another group. Silica is also one of the members that I'm with, mainly because DJ's and Max's group are in an area that is tougher than the one that I'm in. We keep telling her that she's ready for tougher dungeons but no matter how hard we try to convince her, she keeps denying herself. Either way, this gives me and her a chance to bond together. We've never really had time to ourselves like this before. There may be other people, but when we camp out, we'll have a tent all to ourselves. Speaking of, that's what we were doing before something a little out of the ordinary happened.

"How did you and DJ meet?" She asked in the comfort of our tent with Pina laying on her lap. We both felt it was time to get to know what we did IRL instead of in the game.

"I met him through Max (she knows his real name now considering I call him that all the time. He told me to stop but it's really hard to.). I met him while I was playing a game with him and he joined our party. I met him in person during a cookout his family had." I had started to change into my nightwear which caused Silica to stare at me. "What's wrong?" I was just standing there with only my bra and panties on. I didn't give it much thought because there was only another female with me.

"Nothing, I just haven't seen you… exposed before, or anyone besides me." I looked at her a little strange.

"You've never had to change in front of others for gym class or going to the pool or beach?"

"No, when I have gym class I normally go in after everyone else leaves, and as for going to the pool or beach, I normally wear my swimsuit underneath my clothes and just take them off before I get in the water." I understood why this would make her a little flustered.

"Let me guess, it's not the same as seeing others in a swimsuit because this isn't the right setting for it." She nodded. "Well, why not get comfortable yourself. It's a little hot where we're at anyway, I don't mind sleeping like this." When I said that she got even more fluster. I thought it was cute.

"I don't think I can."

"Why?"

"I'll feel self-conscious about how I look." This was the last thing I expected.

"You're joking right?" she gave an audible huh in response. "You have nothing to worry about here. Even if you didn't have the best body, which I don't think is the case, it's just us girls in here. I'm not going to harass you about how you look." I gave her a little more confidence when I said that. "Go ahead, you'll feel a lot more comfortable when you do it trust me." She slowly opened her menu and went into her equipment and took off her armor that she was currently wearing. She immediately felt self-conscious and put her arms around her chest. I wasn't going to have that, so I pulled her arms apart. "Like I said, it's just me, you have nothing to worry about." I let go of her arms and she just put them down to her side. It took some time before she said anything.

"This is going to be a weird question, but what's your size?"

"My size?"

"You know…" She put her hands on her chest. "These."

"Oh, they're an E cup. It was D when we started but somehow the game is able to track my body's growth IRL and I grew another size." She messed around with her chest when I said that. "I can tell you've grown as well. Do you know your size now?"

"B I think, it was A when I first joined." She kept eyeing my chest. "How did yours get so big?"

"Well, they actually started growing in 4th grade, and didn't stop till now, hopefully." She still kept playing with hers.

"Do you mind if I…" She pointed at my chest.

"Sure, I don't mind." She slowly brought her hands up to my chest and made contact with them. being as gentle as she could she moved them around a bit and gave them a little squeeze. I had to bite my lip in order not to moan. After what seemed like an eternity she let go of them.

"They feel really nice. They're soft yet firm." It's amazing this game can render touch so well.

"Thank you. Why don't we get a little shuteye? We have some more grinding to…" I paused when I saw a flashing light outside of the tent. I poked my head out to try and make out some detail of what's out there but the light made it difficult. I reequipped my armor and weapon and started to make my way out of the tent.

"Wait! Where are you going." She asked a little panicked.

"I see a light out in the distance, I'm going to investigate the source of it."

"Then let me go with you." She then equipped her armor and weapon, woke Pina, and proceeded to follow me out of the tent. We followed the light until we came across a monument.

"This wasn't here earlier, was it?" She shook her head.

"I don't remember it being here before." The light that we saw was a lantern.

"Someone else was here. Not only that but this isn't as bright as the light I saw earlier."

"Where are they now?"

"I'm not sure." I inspected the monument and the lettering was in another language. "Do you understand this?" Silica shook her head.

"No, I don't I've never even seen this type of language before." I took a closer look at the lantern and noticed that there was a piece of paper under it. I gave the lantern to Silica to hold while I read the paper. It was a descriptive drawing of the monument. On the drawing, there was an X. It was in an area of the monument that seemed like it could be interacted with.

"Just in case something happens, make sure you keep a good grip on that lantern." Silica nodded her head and I could see the muscles in her hand and forearm tighten a little more. I put my hand where the X was on the paper and I pushed in. We were enveloped by a bright light, similar to the one I saw from the tent, and when that light disappeared we were in a dungeon-like area. Good thing Silica held on to the lantern because it was pretty dark. I took a look around to try and find out where we were and the only thing I was able to come up with was some sort of tomb. There was writing on the walls along with some pictures.

"Where are we?" Silica asked while looking around.

"Some type of tomb. Not sure what floor we're on." I opened my map to see if there was one of this area. "And there's no map data on this place either."

"Maybe there's…" A loud scream interrupted her.

"That came from this direction. Follow me." I took off in the direction of the scream with Silica following behind me. I stopped when I saw a long hallway filled with wires. Someone was at the end of the hallway, on the ground, holding their side.

"Help… me… but… be… careful." She wheezed out before it looked like she passed out.

"We got to get to her fast. She's gonna bleed out if we don't help."

"Scraw!" Pina called.

"Pina can fly through the wires and help buy us time to get to her." Silica suggested. It was a good idea and Pina could use some more training in the healing department.

"If you think she can make it, go for it." Silica gave Pina a pep talk and Pina flew down the hallway, avoiding the wires and got to the girl on the other side. She began to heal her the best she could but it would only buy some time. "Alright, now we have to get down this hallway." Silica immediately became nervous.

"Do we have to? Maybe there's another way around."

"If there is there's no time to find one. You'll be fine, we practiced evasive maneuvers before, it's just like that. I'll even go first so you can see what I do and copy it." Silica just stood behind me and waited. I took a deep breath and jumped through the first set of wires. Using my momentum I kept twisting my body through holes in the wires. About halfway through, I landed on the floor and a tile sank into the ground. A spike came out of the wall to try and skewer me. I picked up the pace and reacted accordingly to the spikes. I had a plan at the beginning, but I didn't count on the tiles being triggers for traps. I reacted the best that I could, using the holes in the walls as clues to where the spikes were coming from. I was able to reach the end without a scratch. I looked back to see Silica watching in awe. "Your turn Sil…" I couldn't finish the sentence because the hallway shook. The wires were cut and the tiles raised back to normal. To be safe I stepped on a tile to make sure it didn't sink. Nothing happened. "Nevermind, it looks safe to cross now." I could hear Silica sigh in relief from the other end of the hallway. As she waltzed through the hallway, I examined the girl. She had the bleeding status ailment which isn't the worst thing in the world by itself, but this ailment was stacked three times on her. Pina kept healing her as much as she could while I got out potions to help get her HP back up and get rid of her bleeding ailment.

"Is she going to be ok?" Silica asked me while looking over my shoulder. I used the potions on her and got her stable.

"She should be ok. We're going to have to wait here until she wakes up, though. I don't feel comfortable about this place. It's not even the threat of monsters that scare me it's the fact that there could be traps anywhere. And we can easily set them off while carrying her." I sat down on the floor next to the girl and just relaxed. Silica came up next to me and sat down as well.

"How did you get through that trap-ridden hallway so easily?"

"It's what we practiced on. Except, instead of predicting someone else's movements I made a plan for my own."

"But you didn't know about the spikes at the end of the hallway did you?"

"No I didn't and that's when I threw my plan out of the window and just reacted. It's something I learned from Max. Before SAO he played a lot of tactical shooters. He said that making a plan is only as good as the intel you were given. If the intel is bad, you have to make split second, instinctual decisions. The team that does that the best will always come out on top. At least, according to him."

"So, basically, sometimes it's better to just react to situations rather than predict them."

"Exactly. It's something that the higher ranking members of the strike team do very well. While it's true that we try and plan fights out thoroughly, we always go in expecting to be wrong. That way, if something does drastically change, we're prepared for it." The girl in front of us started to come to and was looking around until she spotted us.

"Thank you for saving me. It's appreciated." She tried to stand with the help of Silica and once she was up she was able to keep herself up. I got a better look at her then. She had long, brunette hair, and her skin was like a cream color. Her eyes were a beautiful light blue if I had to comment on it. Since I'm describing her body, she had around a C cup for chest size. She had on a Blue battle dress with a silver chest plate, like Silica's

"No problem, we're just happy to get to you in time. By the way, how did you get down here in the first place?" I asked

"I was on a quest to get stronger, I heard that there is a special skill that only one person can learn if they get through this dungeon in one piece." Her eyes widened as if she realized something. "Which one of you two made it through the hallway unscathed?" I cautiously raised my hand. "Really?" Her eyes wandered to my chest. "These didn't get in your way?" She said still eyeing my breasts.

"Not really, it made for some close calls but it wasn't too bad." She opened her inventory to look for something.

"Where's my paper? Did I lose it? That's not good, it has the instructions for the dungeon." I realized that I left the paper we found earlier at the end of the hallway. I walked down the hall, grabbed the paper, and brought it back to the girl.

"Is this what you're looking for?" she grabbed the paper out from my hands and scanned through it.

"Yes! This is it! Thank you." She read through the paper. In our hustle to catch up to the person who went into the dungeon, we didn't think to turn the paper over. "Ok, we're going to continue forward, there shouldn't be any traps ahead for a bit. By the way, my name is Kiki."

"Nice to meet you Kiki, I'm Silica."

"And I'm Nina, nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you as well. Especially with the circumstances. You two saved my life."

"Three." I said.

"Huh?"

"Scraw!" Pina emerged from behind Silica causing the girl to jump, fall back a bit and put her hand on the handle of her dagger.

"It's a dragon!"

"No no! Well yes, but she's a tamed dragon." Silica said.

"You tamed a dragon?" Silica nodded. "That's so cool! What's her name?" She asked getting up in the dragon's face which in turn made her really close to Silica.

"Uhh, Pina." Silica responded with no comfort in her voice. It was clear that she wasn't comfortable with the situation.

"Wow! Hi there Pina. Thanks for your help back there."

"Scraw!" Pina responded looking visually happy. After she had her fill, Kiki backed off of Pina and Silica and took lead in front of us.

"Ok, let's get going!"

We walked through the dungeon for a few minutes. Pretty boring since there weren't any monsters to fight, but we made do with some conversation.

"So are you a part of a guild in SAO?" Silica asked.

"Oh yeah. They don't know I'm here though so we should probably get out of here before daybreak and they start wondering where I am."

"Are you in the assault team?" I asked.

"No, I'm not strong enough. That's why I came here, but now I know I can't get the skill."

"Why not?"

"Because, I didn't get pass the hallway in one piece. According to what I figured out about the skill, it's only available to the first person to get through the dungeon unscathed. As you saw before, I was not unscathed. So I'm out. You can possibly get it, though." She pointed at me.

"Do you know what the skill does?" She shook her head.

"But if it's so special that only one person can learn it, then it must be powerful." I started wondering what could possibly be the skill that can be learned by going through this dungeon. My first guess was a skill that's used for dodging but I felt like that wouldn't be the only part of the skill.

"Hey Kiki, how did you know what language the monument showed?"

"Oh, that was Russian. I actually live there. I used to live in America for most of my life, though." She started to look a little sad when she mentioned she lived in America.

"Hard moving away from your friends?" I asked.

"Yeah, you could say that." She was so deep in her own thoughts she didn't realize that we walked into an arena.

"Hey Kiki, where are we?" I asked her. She snapped out of her thoughts and looked at her paper.

"This is the arena, where you'll be given one last test before you can learn the skill."

"Which is?" A skeleton archer formed at the other end of the arena. Its health bar was very low as if one light tap could finish him.

"Killing that guy." She grabbed Silica's hand and bolted to the entrance behind me. "We can't help you and we don't want to be caught in the crossfire, so good luck!" I started wondering what kind of test this was. My mind was scrambling trying to figure out why killing such a weak enemy would warrant challenging enough to learn a special skill. It just didn't make sense to me. I started running toward the archer, hoping to get this done as quick as possible, but in the blink of an eye the archer drew and arrow and fired directly at me. The arrow was as fast as a bullet, but I was able to dodge it fairly easily. It was then that I realized what this was meant to challenge me on. I may have been able to dodge it easily now, but as I get closer dodging will only become harder and harder. It's testing my reflexes, my instincts.

I sprinted towards him again, keeping my knife in its sheath. As quick as inhumanly possible, he let loose his arrows, each one speeding towards me like a bullet. One by one I dodged them as I continued to close the distance on him. I was almost there when his strategy changed. Instead of letting loose one arrow at a time, he let loosed multiple arrows at once. Increasing by one every time. Two arrows, then three, then four. I had to move carefully. Dodging one could mean walking into another. And I'm too close to slip up now. As a last resort, he let loose five arrows in a fan pattern. There was no way to dodge horizontally without giving up distance, so I slid underneath the arrows, swept the skeletons legs and let him fall to the ground. The fall causing the minuscule amount of HP he had left to deplete to zero. I expected the skeleton to disappear but it never did. It just laid there.

"You can grab your spoils now. There's a dagger that the Skeleton is carrying, you can pick it up and use it as your own." I inspected the skeleton and sure enough, there was a dagger right next to it I picked it up and inspected its stats. Surprisingly, it was slightly better than my current dagger. As I went to equip it I noticed that I could equip it in my offhand slot, something I couldn't do before now. I swapped the dagger I got just now with my current one and move my current dagger to my off hand. A second holster appeared behind me and both daggers crossed each other. I pulled both daggers out and the game allowed me to carry both of them. I was extremely confused by what was going on, then I remembered the skill.

"Kiki, do you know what skill I was supposed to learn?"

"The skill you should have learned after this is the dual wielding skill. It allows you to use two daggers at the same time. It only works for daggers, though. Now, you can do twice the damage and be able to dodge a majority of attacks now." I was in awe. Now, I was more of the DPS character that was needed in our group.

"That's great. And to think I only got it because I was curious what that light meant outside of our tent."

"Speaking of light, how do we…" No sooner did Silica start her sentence did a bright light surround us. When it vanished, we were back to where we started. It was still dark out and a look at the clock on my HUD confirmed that it was very early in the morning.

"Thank you guys for your help, but I should get back to my guild headquarters before they wake up and realize I'm gone."

"No problem, we're happy to help."

"Before you go, though, I have a favor to ask."

"Sure, what is it?"

"Can I feel your face?" I was confused why she would want to do that but I wasn't going to deny her the opportunity.

"Uh… sure." She ran her fingers lightly over my face. thoroughly feeling everything from my forehead to my chin.

"Thank you, I'll remember your face if we ever meet IRL. Thanks again for your help. Bye!" She turned and walked away but I was confused by what she last said.

"Hey, why can't you just recognize me with your eyes?" She couldn't hear me, though, she was long gone. "Oh well, guess I'll have to find out some other time." I let out a rather loud yawn.

"You must be exhausted after doing all of that. Why don't we turn in and get some shuteye before we finish our trip with the guild tomorrow."

"I agree with that." We both went to the tent and I took off my armor until I was left in just my undergarments. Silica was hesitant to do the same.

"Come on Silica, get comfortable.

"Are we really going to go through this again?"

"Nah, I'm too tired for that but if you want to do so then be my guest." I got in my sleeping bag and closed my eyes. Before I drifted off to sleep, though, I heard the sound of someone messing with their menu and the sound of something disappearing.

 **Kiki was someone I contemplated about putting in the story. This might be the last you see of her in this story, but I've been thinking about a possible sequel to this story. Not saying that this is going to end soon because it's not. Still got plenty of ideas. And as far as me and my ex-girlfriend goes, don't worry about it. Whatever happens between me and her this story will still go on. Until next time this is ragmanthemadman, signing off.**


	11. Party Crasher

**Sorry for being late with this. I've taken this up all on my own now. It doesn't help that I'm getting swamped with essays either. Please bear with me on the slow progress. It'll pick up when I have more free time. Probably after finals. Thank you for your support and I hope you enjoy the chapter.**

 **P.S. I have a request for you guys at the end of the chapter.**

[DJ's POV]

It's insane how much of a chore this game has become now. We just got to floor 70 and there is always a procedure. Find the boss, get intel, defeat the boss, repeat. It's become boring, and it's a grind. The fights are different and that still make this game interesting, but to do the same thing around the clock with no break will make anyone bored. Thankfully, Kirito was able to convince Asuna to give us all a break. Something is going on between them but I'm not quite sure what it is yet. So, what did I do on my day off? I went to get my equipment checked. I know right, way to waste a day off. I went to Lizbeth's Smith Shop, an armory that's run by Asuna's friend Lizbeth. I've never met her before but I've heard that Kirito has. Apparently, they got into deep shit together. They're alright, though. Just so I wouldn't be alone, I brought Silica with me too. We tend to hang out a lot anyways. She's still not sure if she's ready for the front lines, but we keep reassuring her that she is. We won't force her, though, whenever she's ready we'll accept her with open arms.

When we arrived at Lizbeth's shop, we noticed that there were many weapons and armor on display. One's that are extremely high quality. They rival some rare monster drops. I can see why Kirito, Asuna, and many other high-level players come here.

"Welcome to Lizbeth's smith shop!" A pink haired girl yelled out after coming through. She seemed very upbeat and vibrant. "Can I help you with anything?" She walked behind her main counter and gave us a smile.

"We came to get our equipment maintained." We both unsheathed the weapons we were carrying and placed it in front of her. My spear and Silica's dagger getting looked at by Lizbeth with a shocked look in her eyes.

"These are extremely rare drops, way better than any weapon I could forge. How'd you get these?"

"How else? We grinded monsters until it dropped." I responded.

"This shouldn't be an issue, but with the materials that need to be used in order to keep the weapon maintained, it won't be cheap."

"How much?" I asked.

"100,000 Col each." She's right, that is expensive for a maintenance job. At least there's a benefit to grinding monsters every day besides the item drops.

"No problem." A prompt appeared in front of me asking if I approve of this transaction which I confirmed with the press of the blue and white circle button.

"Great, I'll have these done in no time. Stop by later tonight and they should be done." We nodded and left the shop when she went to the back room.

"What are we going to do for several hours?" I was saying that more figuratively than literally but nonetheless Silica came up with something.

"I heard there's a place that's like a hot springs on the 60th floor. We can ask the others to come with us." That actually didn't sound too bad if I'm going to be honest.

"I think that's a great idea, I'll message everyone. We can meet at the teleport gate." I proceeded to send a message to Max, Nina, Kirito, and Asuna. I doubted that Kirito would actually want to go but it didn't hurt to at least let him know he's invited. On our way to the teleport pad after sending those messages, I got a response from everyone saying they'll be happy to come. Even Kirito and he didn't seem to want to do anything to relax. He's always grinding something.

* * *

After only a few minutes of waiting, everyone came to the town's teleport gate.

"Just so you know, I got some information from a broker on that place. She said that there're some monsters on the way there." Kirito told us.

"Silica and I dropped our main equipment off, but I suppose our backups will suffice. As long as they're not named monsters we should be able to get through them just fine."

"Yeah, you should be fine. Just thought I'd give everyone a heads up."

"You guys didn't use Liz's shop to maintain your weapons did you?" Asuna asked us. I slowly nodded.

"Why?"

"I invited Liz to come with us. She's a friend of mine and I didn't want her to be left out." I didn't mind and I don't think Silica would either. We just wait an extra day for our equipment to be done. Right on cue, Lizbeth comes running our way, still in her smithing outfit. It made me wonder if that was actually her armor. She spotted Silica and me immediately.

"You don't mind waiting an extra day for your stuff, do you?" She asked us. Silica and I both shook our heads. "Good, then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" She practically shoved us on the teleport gate. It was clear she was excited to go.

* * *

The 60th floor has monsters that are mainly forest type creatures. The only monsters we had to fight were some boars. At night, though, it's a different story. Wolves and bats tend to come out to fight. We all agreed to make sure we left before sundown so we don't get caught in a bad situation. Kirito, Max, Asuna, and Nina won't have an issue but without my main equipment, I don't know how much I'll be able to do. Same with Silica, and we have no clue how good of a fighter Liz is. We arrived at a clean and pristine lake, with the hot springs further up a hill. We decided to take a swim in the lake. Everyone had swimwear on and was eager to get in the pool, except for Max. Nina and I knew why but everyone else didn't know why Max didn't hop in.

"Max c'mon in, let's have a race!" Kirito called out to him. Max just stayed with his toes dipped in the water.

"I'm good, I'll just be on look out duty." Even though we weren't technically in a safe zone, there were no monsters around and a player coming out here for this is slim to none. Everyone knew this and made a slightly worried look at each other. I looked at Nina to see if I can spill the beans but she shook her head sternly. I guess Max wants to be the one to tell the others.

"I'll race you Kirito." I spoke up to try and get everyone's attention off of Max.

"Oh, it's on DJ." Kirito and I proceeded to have a race from one end of the lake to the other. Kirito was extremely fast. I was barely able to keep up with him. It sucks sometimes that your value in this world is determined by numbers for your attributes. Kirito beat me in a dominant fashion. Made me wonder if Max would have even stood a chance with his lack of speed, in-game of course.

"You're really fast." I exclaimed to him.

"You're no slowpoke yourself." Everyone that came with us gave us a little bit of an applause. Clearly enjoying the little competition that we had. Max, meanwhile, was also showing applause, but I saw through his mask. He was hiding his true feelings. Nina and I know him too well to be fooled by his "masks". If I had to guess, he was upset that he couldn't have fun with his friends.

* * *

We spent another half hour at the lake before we finished our trek to the hot springs. The springs were separated by a jagged rock formation in the middle. So both guys and girls could be in the springs on each side. After stripping down to nothing, the guys entered the springs. The heated water soothing our virtual muscles.

"This feels great." Max said.

"Hey, Max. Why didn't you get in the water with us at the lake?" Kirito asked him. We both looked at each other, and Max sighed.

"It's about time to tell someone." He told me, then looked at Kirito. "In real life, I have a condition known as arrhythmia." Kirito made a slightly confused look. "Basically, my heart has an irregular heartbeat. Specifically, Tachycardia. My heart beats too fast at times. There's a natural pacemaker that your body has so your heart doesn't beat too fast. My natural pacemaker doesn't work properly." Kirito went wide eyed at the explanation and slowly nodded in understanding.

"I never knew. You look athletic, though."

"I take pills for it and I learned to control my heartbeat."

"How come your worrying about it now?"

"I had an attack in the middle of the night a few months ago. I told Nina and DJ as soon as I could. They knew I had it in real life but they didn't think it would affect me in-game, and neither did I. Ever since then, I take the same precautions I do in real life. To finally get to your question about why I didn't get in the lake with you guys, the shock from cold water can make me shiver. That's not what you want with my condition. I know some things don't translate to what you feel in real life but I'm not taking any chances."

"I understand. Thank's for telling someone now. If something happened to you and we didn't have Nina or DJ around, we wouldn't have known what to do with you."

"No problem. I should probably tell the others too. But I'll do it after they have their fun."

"Speaking of fun, check out what I came across while leveling the other day." He opened his menu and went to his inventory, he then flipped the screen over to Max.

"You found this much Ragout Rabbit meat?" Kirito nodded.

"Yup, the elusive S-class ingredient that I happen to have enough of for everyone. I asked Asuna if we could invite everyone to her place to have a nice dinner."

"Wait, did Asuna max out her cooking skill?" I asked. Kirito nodded with a smug. "You seem way too happy about that."

"It's a benefit for me. We've grown closer as friends now."

"Just friends?" I gave him a glare when I said that. I could see a blush grow on his face, and I doubt that was from the hot water.

"Y-yeah."

"Hey, Boys!" I heard Asuna call from the other side of the hot spring.

"Yeah, Asuna!?" Kirito responded.

"We're all ready to head back. You guys done yet?"

"We're just finishing up. Give us a minute." He responds. All of us got out of the hot spring and met up with the rest of the group.

"Alright, let's get going." Asuna says when we all get together. We all immediately started heading to town but Silica got grabbed by something and started getting dragged off.

"DJ!" She screamed while getting dragged away. She used her dagger to try and get some traction in the dirt but it wasn't enough to stop her from moving. I used my spear to cut the tentacle off of her leg. While I was helping her up Max came up next to me to see if we were alright. I was about to respond but more tentacles grabbed us and started to drag us away, faster than they were with Silica before Kirito tried to grab Max's hand but missed. After getting dragged away from them, I felt like I was falling into an area of pitch black darkness. The only thing that helped me see was the icons above Silica's and Max's heads. I knew the fall was going to hurt us but Max had very high defense, silica didn't. I had a high health pool so I tried to break Silica's fall by grabbing a hold of her and putting her above me. Just in time before we hit the ground and I blacked out.

* * *

The first thing I saw when I woke up was Pina licking my face. When she saw that I was awake she flew around in circles above us, happy to see us alive. The next thing I realized was that Silica was on top of me. Her health bar was in the green while mine was in the yellow on the cusp of turning red. By the look of things, she was still out cold. I looked around for Max and eventually spotted him sitting on a rock going through his inventory. There was a lantern next to him that was providing light for the rest of us. He was probably looking over the both of us to make sure that nothing happened. He could have at least moved us from this position, though. Silica on top of me does not paint a PG picture. I tried to move her off of me but I misplace my hand and ended up touching her breast instead. This was enough to cause her to awaken and moan a little as well. I froze when she did that which made me look guilty of groping her on purpose. At first, she didn't move, but then Max cleared his throat to announce his presence and she pushed herself off of me as soon as she heard him. I stood up slowly and stretched my virtual muscles. I then used a healing crystal on myself to get my HP back to full.

"Glad to see you two are awake."

"Good to be awake. What happened?"

"There are some tentacles that come out of those holes around the pit that we're in. According to Kirito people tend to disappear around here but no one knew why, until now."

"He couldn't have warned us before we came here?"

"He said he didn't want to ruin our fun."

"So much good that is now. We're cut off from the rest of the group now."

"True, but there is a cave right there that might lead out of here." Max pointed to the cave behind me. "Teleport Crystals are useless here, so that's our best bet for finding a way out. I let the others know to go on without us. We'll meet up at Asuna's place."

"There won't be any more tentacle monsters will there?" Silica asked nervously. I was wondering why she asked that and then I remembered what happened when we went to revive Pina.

"I can't say for sure if there aren't any inside but be on the lookout nonetheless." Max responded. Silica's reaction to that was mixed, to say the least. Pina landed on her shoulder to try and comfort her a bit. Silica laughed a bit and began to scratch under Pina's chin.

"Thanks, Pina." All three of us went inside the cave to see if there was a way out of here. Max took point and led the way with his lantern. Silica pulled me a little bit behind him so that he went on a little bit ahead just out of earshot. "Was that on purpose?" At first, I was really confused at what she said but then I remembered what I did to try and move her off of me just five minutes ago.

"No, it wasn't. I wouldn't do that if you weren't ok with it." She held my hand in hers.

"I didn't mind it. Max just scared me, that's all." I blushed redder than a tomato when she said that. I've never given much thought to doing 'stuff' with females like other teenagers do. When she said that, it suddenly went to the front of my mind and I could not stop thinking about it. Yet at the same time, I know nothing about how to do something like that. Naturally, I feel nervous when doing _something_ has a strong probability of happening.

"I'm new to that sort of thing. I guess I was ignorant to it at times. But when I'm aware it's happening I get nervous. I don't think I'm ready for that sort of thing."

"I never said I was either. But, I'm willing to move forward if you are." I'm glad I have Silica as an in-game wife. I hope to continue a relationship when we get out of SAO.

"Ok, thank you Silica. You mean a _lot_ to me." I gave her a peck on the cheek. I knew she was blushing, even though I couldn't see her.

"Guys, take a look at this." Max called out to us, taking us out of our little world. He was holding his lantern up to something on the wall. Silica and I got closer to it to make out what was interesting about it. It was a list of player names. "I recognize a few of these names, these are some players that disappeared."

"You don't think that they died here do you? And this is some memorial for them like the one at the Town of Beginnings."

"It probably is." All of us felt a sense of dread now. It was one thing going to place where people disappeared. It's another to find out that they also died in the same place. They were missing for weeks, months for some of them. I don't know why any of us thought we could find survivors, other than being optimistic. Sometimes, that optimism can just lead to disappointment. "Don't dwell on this, whatever challenge they couldn't get through, we can."

"You're probably right." What would have been great to know is how they died, but we didn't have that luxury. We continued forward, in the seamlessly never-ending cave. There was another light source that I saw further into the cave. I don't know what came over me, but I felt a need to go get whatever was making that light. I went past Max and nearly sprinted to the light.

"DJ, wait up." I heard Max start jogging towards me. His armor clunking around when he moved. I rounded a corner and came upon a pedestal with a stone on it. I tapped it and information on it came up.

 _Lightning stone. Can be fused into any weapon with an empty gem slot. This stone gives the weapon an electrical charge which gives every attack the element of lightning._

I felt Max reading the description of the item over my shoulder.

"This seems sketchy. I have never heard of an item that has slots on it for stones like that. They usually come as is and can be improved by blacksmiths." I made sure my spear was ready and I put the stone in my inventory. At first, nothing happened, but then the pedestal itself started glowing. Sensing danger, Max pulled me behind him and put his shield up. I took cover behind him and guarded Silica, who was shielding Pina. There was an explosion that I thought would knock us out, but Max was holding his ground. In fact, he didn't move at all. It was like he was impenetrable. When the blast was over, I rose over Max to see the damage. The wall behind the pedestal was wide open, leading to what looked like an arena. Max stood up and dusted himself and his equipment off before looking at the arena ahead of him. "Déjà vu." He said to no one in particular. It was odd to hear him say that, though. We proceeded into the arena with caution. Taking care not to set off any traps. When we were near the center of the arena the ground started shaking. I looked up to see what looked like and octopus dropping down from above. The shaking caused the entrance we came through to have rocks fall in front of it. There was no escape now. The monster had no name, at least not one that was known. When the name and health bars popped up it showed question marks as its name.

"This does not look good." The Octopus dove right for me, so I jumped backward to dodge the attack. But while I was in the air, the Octopus swung a tentacle at me. Seeing I was in danger Max hopped in front of me to try and take the hit. He did, but he took a lot more damage than his defense should allow him to. He landed on the ground and held his side.

"That thing finds gaps in your armor and exploits it. It basically ignores your defense." That was not good news. Even with his high health pool, he took enough damage to be put into the yellow. If that thing hits Silica, she's going to be in the red, or worse. Max was going to be a sitting duck in this fight. He's not fast enough, stat-wise, to dodge attacks. This meant that Silica and I would have to take care of this on out own.

"Silica, I'll draw its attention, go around to its blind side and catch it off guard!" She nodded in understanding of the plan. I ran straight towards the Octopus and stabbed at it with my spear. Only for my spear to slide around it. It's like I couldn't cut into it. I watched Silica not have any luck either. Her dagger just bounced off its skin.

"How are we supposed to defeat it if we can't even pierce its skin?" She shouted at me.

"I… I don't know I'm not sure what we can do." I felt the end of my spear and felt some water on it, then I had an idea. I opened my inventory and got the electric stone to appear in my hand. I threw the stone at the Octopus as hard as I could. On contact, the Octopus was getting electrocuted. Its whole body had sparks of electricity coming out of him. His HP fell drastically, from three bars to two, then one, then none. All in a matter of seconds. As soon as its HP hit zero the Octopus burst into blue triangles. The stone was on the floor where the Octopus fell, right next to a spear. Upon closer inspection of the spear, I found that it had a hole. The hole looked to be about the same size as the stone. I put the stone in the spear and it reacted by having sparks come out the tip. The name of the spear was Gungnir. Max and Silica came up next to me to examine the spear.

"That's really cool." Max exclaimed. I agreed, the spear was really cool. I immediately equipped it as my weapon. "You'll have to let Liz take a look at it so she can see just how much it's worth. You don't see a weapon like that every day."

"That's true, and I don't plan on giving it away." A hidden door opened while we were looking at the dropped spear. When we were done gawking, we headed out of the arena and back into the forest.

"It's a little off the path but we can find our wayback." Max told us. We followed him and somehow made it back to town without encountering a single monster. As soon as we arrived at the town we teleported toSelmburg on the 61st floor, where Asuna lived.

* * *

Upon arrival, the food was already prepared. Asuna didn't want anyone to start eating until we came back so it was appreciated that we came back hastily. While eating, we talked about that dungeon we were in and the Octopus we had to fight to get out. I also showed them the new spear that I had. After telling what happened in the dungeon, we all started telling random stories. Some funny, some scary, even some that were embarrassing. Nina called me and Max into the back room to talk to us.

"I have something to say." Max and I both looked at her, waiting to see what she was going to say. "I… told the girls about your condition. They were worried and kept asking questions so eventually I just spilled. I'm sorry, I know you wanted that to be kept a secret."

"It's alright, Kirito knows as well. Saves me the trouble of telling everyone." Nina breathed out a sigh of relief as if she was preparing herself for this all dinner long. Out of nowhere, I yawned.

"You think Asuna will be opposed to a sleepover?" I asked. Max and Nina looked at each other. Then around Asuna's house.

"There won't be enough places to sleep for everyone that's here. If you just mean you and Silica then I don't see why she would." On cue, Asuna walked past us and caught us out of the corner of her eye.

"What are you guys doing back here?"

"Just having a chat. Do you mind if Silica and I sleep over for the night? I'm too tired to head to an inn nearby."

"I don't mind, I have a guest bed for the occasion." I was surprised that she did. She's usually doing things on her own so I'm surprised she has a guest bed at all.

"Thank you, Asuna. You mind showing me where that is so I can crash early?" Asuna opened a door next to her room that revealed another bedroom. It was half the size as hers but it could easily fit two people. "Thank you, Asuna. Mind letting Silica know where I am so she can come back when she's ready?" Asuna nodded and went back to join the others.

"We're going to hang out with them for a little longer before we leave. Have a good night."

"You too Max. See ya later." I went into the bedroom and changed into my t-shirt and shorts before plopping on the bed, sleep finding me almost instantly.

[Third person POV]

Meanwhile, Heathcliff was watching the recording of DJ defeating the Octopus monster in the dungeon. The moment when DJ threw the stone replaying over and over again.

"That's three. It's almost complete, there's only one skill left." Opening a separate menu he scrolled through the names of the many players in SAO only stopping at Kirito. "Let's see how he handles seeing this in his skill tree." He smirked a bit before selecting Kirito's name. "Now, I wait."

 **Ok two announcements. One, I joined Lethal6ix!**

…

 **Who cares right? It's just something that I wanted to do. Lethal6ix is the Rainbow Six Siege division of Lethal gaming. I wanted to get into competitive gaming for a while (considering I play them so much) and this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.**

 **My second announcement is actually more of a question. Since I took up this story I've continued with the same storyline that was made from the beginning.**

 **But I think I can do better than that.**

 **It involves bringing in the Hollow Area, and it's something I'm not entirely prepared to do (meaning most of it is going to be though up as I go along). So I have a question for you guys. Should I continue writing the story as is, or should I defer from that and give a little more of a twist to it. Not going to lie, it'll take time to write the version that I'm thinking of doing but it shouldn't be much longer than what I do now.**

 **It's up to you guys now. P.M. me or post a review with your answer. I'll tally the score in a week and write the next chapter based on your responses. So be sure to do that. Until next time this is ragmanthemadman, signing off.**


	12. Floor 74

**Thank you for the support while my dad wasn't doing well. He's alright now. Now for what I plan to do, I'm going to change my storyline from what it was originally supposed to be. I think it'll turn out to be a better story overall than the previous one (I also changed the story a bit already so it's too late to go back to the original). So without further ado, here's the next chapter.**

 **P.S. nothing you need to go back and check on but I changed some of the levels of the characters in previous chapters. Thanks to Skie89 for pointing out that the levels were unrealistic and I agree. They've been changed to a more realistic number.**

[Max's POV]

Another day another dungeon. That's what it's been like for the past week. The ones prior to this were to help members of my guild to level up, but today is different. Today was leveling with friends.

"Ha!" A spear sliced through a lizardman, turning its body into digital dust. DJ rested his spear on his shoulder. "Glad we're fighting monsters that people our level should be fighting. Lower level monsters were starting to become boring to fight." Silica had one of her hands on her knees while leaning on DJ for support.

"I know you guys said I was ready for this but I really don't think I am. I'm tired after one monster."

"You'll get better. These monsters can't be beaten by just using the basics. Advance maneuvers have to be used. It's tiring at first but if you do them enough it'll feel like basics to you." I told her. She stood up straight still leaning on DJ.

"Can I sit the next one out?"

"We'll just wait for you to catch your breath." Not far from where DJ, Silica and I were, Kirito, Asuna and Nina were fighting some other lizardmen. They were making short work of them as well. All of us decided to get together and level up as a group. At first, we weren't going to bring Kirito. None of us thought we could convince him to come with us, but Asuna somehow did. When they finished killing their group of monsters, they looked over to see how we were doing.

"Silica going to be ok?" Asuna asked with concern. I nodded.

"She's just tired. Not used to dealing with monsters that have complex attack patterns. Just let her rest for a bit." Kirito was making a map of the dungeon and was making sure that it looked accurate to what we explored so far.

"It's crazy that you guys have unique abilities. First, your impenetrable skill, then Nina's duel wielding, now DJ has an elemental spear. Although that is more of a rare weapon than a unique skill but still."

"Did we tell you? We found out that his weapon levels up on its own as well. So no matter how far we get his spear will be able to compete with the monsters."

"That's so cool! And don't worry, no one else knows but me." Asuna found it odd that I blocked that monsters attack knowing that it nearly one shot some of her guild members. Silica also let it slip that she and Nina were in a secret dungeon with another girl. They never told her name, though. Needless to say, Asuna wanted an explanation. I told her about Nina and I having unique skills and not long after that DJ got his. We asked if she could keep quiet about it and so far she's kept it secret. She hasn't even told Kirito. We plan on letting everyone know when the time is right. Silica regained her composure and jumped up and down for emphasis.

"Alright, I'm ready to go again." She twirled her knife in her hand.

"Alright, let's move forward then." We all continued further into the dungeon. The next set of enemies appearing not too far from where we previously were. This time we split up into three groups. Nina and I were together. DJ and Silica were together. And lastly, Kirito and Asuna were together. Kirito and Asuna fought with lighting fast speed. Switching constantly to keep the enemy off balance. DJ and Silica fought similar, except DJ stepped in to redirect attacks away from Silica. She was ready for higher floors level wise, but skill wise she could use some work. What better way to learn than from experience? Then there was Nina and I. I took the front, blocking any attack that came my way, and Nina came in to deal blows then the enemy was attacking me. They stop attacking, I start attacking. Thanks to Nina's duel wielding she can deal twice as much damage as she normally can which made fights a breeze. After the fights, we all looked at Silica.

"How do you feel now?" Nina asked her.

"I'm starting to get the hang of it." She said enthusiastically. We went further into the dungeon with ease. The synergy between all of us allowed us to fight without much communication. We reached a big door that just screamed 'boss room'. All of us looked at each other knowing exactly what we had to do, except for Silica. DJ took the liberty of explaining the situation to her.

"We're in front of a boss room right now, we don't know if it's the floor boss or not so we're going to open the door to take a peak." He gave her a teleport crystal. "If we're forced to fight after opening the door, teleport out without hesitation. It shouldn't happen but there are times where it has." Silica held her crystal close to her.

"Ok." She responded. I was up front at the door and Kirito was next to me, both of us with teleport crystals in hand. We slowly opened the door to reveal a room that looked like a tomb. As soon as the door opened, a bunch of torches lit up the room in a dim light, revealing a huge ram like monster in the middle. It was kneeling for a second before it snorted and started to stand. Its sword was the length of its lower body. The four HP bars appeared above its head along with its name, Gleam Eyes. After its dramatic appearance, it gave a guttural roar directly at us. Knowing that we've seen enough, we ran out of the room as fast as we could and did not stop running until we were sure that the aggro wore off on the monster.

"That was a floor boss!?" Silica exclaimed. "You could feel the power resonating from that beast."

"Hate to break it to you, but that floor boss is on another level than the ones we've fought before." Kirito said.

"We're going to need a squad of dedicated tanks to block the attacks that thing can dish out and even at that getting close enough to hit it will be a nightmare in itself. It's very agile." Asuna commented.

"On the bright side, we got something to report to the assault team." Nina said trying to find a silver lining.

"True, but that can wait. Let's keep leveling for a bit. Away from that monstrosity." DJ commented. No one saw any problem so that's exactly what we kept doing. We were at it for about an hour before we decided to take a break. Asuna brought some food with her so we could have lunch.

"This is delicious!" All of us said in response to Asuna's amazing sandwiches.

"Glad you guys like it. Silica helped make them."

"Yeah, but I didn't do more than help dress up the sandwiches."

"No, you did more than that. You helped cut the meats and helped make the sauces."

"Awesome job… Silica… the sauces taste… just like mustard… and soy sauce… IRL." DJ said in between bites. Silica's cheeks turned red at his compliment.

"Thanks, but it was Asuna's recipe." Kirito looked at Asuna.

"How did you figure out how to make these?" Asuna showed a bunch of papers with detailed work on it.

"A year's worth of studying and experiments. Mastering cooking helped as well. This can be made by anyone with the right ingredients, though." The amount of work she did to figure out how to recreate real life flavors was astonishing. It really showed how much Asuna loved to cook.

"You should sell these." Nina suggested.

"Absolutely not!" DJ, Kirito, and I exclaimed together.

"Why not?" Kirito answered for the group.

"Because, there won't be any left for the rest of us." The girls got a chuckle out of that.

"Honestly do you guys think of anything but food."

"Yeah, we think about the game a lot too. For instance, we still haven't found the floor boss on this floor." I countered.

"The Knights are working on it. We're pretty much the only ones in this spot because I was able to convince Heathcliff to let me form a party to come here."

"What about that guy that was assigned to give you protection? Shouldn't he be here with you?" Nina asked.

"Ugh, don't remind me. Kirito had to scare him off so I could do this. Hopefully, he doesn't tell Heathcliff about it and we can continue leveling in peace." The 74th floor was no joke. At this point in the game, the AI is so complex you would think you were fighting another person. An experience that all of us, unfortunately, experienced at one point or another.

"Yo Kirito." We all looked up to see a player that we're not too familiar with outside of raids and his guild.

"Hey Klein, how's it going?" Kirito got up to greet him. Klein saw that Kirito was hanging out with a group and pulled him into a semi-private conversation. And by semi-private, I mean he just turned Kirito away from us but still spoke loud enough for us to hear.

"So, Kirito, when were you going to tell me about these hang outs you're having?"

"Klein we're just out leveling. It's not like we're out having a… picnic." Kirito facepalmed after he said that. Probably because that was exactly what it looked like we were doing.

"Relax Kirito, I'm just teasing. Besides, I think it's good that you're finding friends to hang out with." I decided to interrupt.

"Hey Kirito, mind introducing us? Outside of raids, we don't know this guy."

"Yeah sure. This is Klein. He's been with us on our boss raids…"

"We know that dingus, tell us how you know him. Clearly, he knows you outside of raids." DJ said out of the blue. Have no clue where he got the word 'dingus' from.

"Oh, well he was the first player that I met when the game first launched."

"He taught me the ropes. Pleasure to me you guys by the way." We all introduced ourselves to Klein and his guild. I even told them that I was a beta tester and that Kirito and I played together a lot at that time.

"Another beta tester huh? Not something you normally want to say when you introduce yourself."

"Normally I don't but you don't seem like the type of guys to judge someone like that. I mean you are friends with Kirito who, no offense, is probably the most notorious of us all." Kirito shrugged it off. He knew what I said was true.

"Yeah you're right. By the way, what's the relationship status of you guys? I couldn't help but notice the same number of boys to girls here." He put his hand under his chin and gave a sly grin when he asked that.

"Klein, we're just a group of players trying to level up. Our relationships aren't your concern." Kirito said rather sternly. Klein put his hands up in defense.

"Ok Kirito geez, it was just a question." When Klein said that I noticed that a group of players was coming from behind him. The players were all dressed in dark gray and black armor with helmets that covered their eyes. They were lazily marching towards us with most men in the group grunting and groaning with every step. Everyone else at this point noticed them and watched as they continued getting closer. When they were right behind Klein's guild the guy leading the group, who I assumed was the commander, said 'at ease' to the players behind him. Immediately, all players dropped to the ground gasping for breath and wiping the virtual sweat off their foreheads. The commander walked up to us and introduced himself.

"Hello everyone, my name is Kobats, Lieutenant Colonel of the Aincrad Liberation Front." Silica tapped my shoulder.

"What guild is that?" She whispered in my ear.

"It's a guild that's a lot like The Knights of the Blood Oath. At least, they used to be. They tried to take on a floor boss with just their numbers and got slaughtered as a result. They retreated to the first floor to regroup but we haven't heard from them since. Until now that is." She nodded her head and went back to DJ's side. DJ didn't know about the group so he probably told Silica to ask me if I knew. Now she's whispering in DJ's ear, probably relaying what I just told her.

"I'm wondering if you guys have any intel of this dungeon. If you do, you should give it to the ALF." I heard rumors that a guild was bullying people on lower floors to help them out because of their guild name and motive. I'm starting to think that these are the guys. We all looked at each other, debating whether to give these guys any information. Kirito steeped up to the guy.

"I have a map, you can have it." We all wanted to stop him. Calling out to him saying that he could sell the map for money to an info broker or to players who needed it more that these guys but he continued. "It's not a big deal, besides I can just make another." After exchanging the map the commander showed his thanks and went back to his group. "You're not planning on going to take the boss on, are you?" He didn't respond to Kirito which only confirmed that he was. "There's no way you can beat him with the players you have right now! Look at them, they're exhausted just from getting here."

"Nonsense, my men are tough as nails. C'mon boys! On your feet." He shouted at them. All of them grunted as they got up. Some looked a little weak kneed but they tried to hide it. "We continue forward." He led the group further into the dungeon.

"We have to follow him." I said.

"Duh. If we don't history could repeat itself." Asuna said.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Klein exclaimed. We started to follow behind the guild but unfortunately for us monsters started to spawn again. Thanks to Klein and his guild helping, clearing the monsters took less time than before. When we got to the front of the boss room door, it was closed and had no sign of anyone being inside.

"Maybe they teleported out?" Nina said with uncertainty. Then there was a scream which threw that idea out the window. Our group ran towards the door, while Klein's group was stopped by fresh spawning enemies. We pushed the door open and what we saw was not good. The monster backed the players into a corner. Most of the group was on their knees, too tired to put up a fight.

"What are you guys doing! Teleport out." Kirito yelled at them. One of the soldiers responded.

"We can't, the crystals aren't working." The Gleam Eyes struck the group again, sending some players flying into others. "Kobats get your men out of there! This is a losing fight."

"That's what you think! C'mon men, lets show this monster who the real boss is! Charge!" His group charged the monster, swinging their weapons wildly with the hope of landing a hit. With a guttural roar and a mighty swing of its sword, Gleam eyes stopped the attack. Kobats was sent flying through the air, landing in front of the boss room door where we were at. The damage was enough to eliminate his helmets durability and thus his helmet turned to digital dust.

"It can't be." Was his last words before he burst into two triangles. We were all stunned at his death and was almost oblivious to the rampage the monster was going on players were yelling in the midst of confusion.

"What do we do!"

"We have wounded over here!"

"Someone help us!" The screams were starting to get to us, and it was only a matter of time before someone cracked. And the first person who did, was Asuna.

"NNNNOOOOOO!" Asuna screamed while charging headfirst at the beast. Using her speed to her advantage she got a bunch of quick jabs in and got away from its counterattack. When we saw her charge in we snapped out of our shock and focused on helping her. Even Klein finished his fight with the monsters we ran past and started to help by removing the injured and tired from the fight. I focused on keeping the boss busy and let everyone else get their licks in. Unfortunately, Gleam eyes was way too fast for me to block effectively. I'll cover for one person and by the time their attack is about to land Gleam eyes attacks again and the player must dodge or block. It was too fast for a small group to do anything to it. If we did land an attack it would barely scratch it. At the rate this was going we were going to tire ourselves out before we could finish it off. I heard Kirito yell in the background.

"I can beat this thing, just buy me ten seconds!"

"You got it Kirito." I decided to damage the enemy myself. The first attack exposed me and my shield but I used the force of that to give more power into my strike. I was able to take a chunk of health away but nothing too significant. When it attacked again had to use my unique skill to avoid letting the attack go through me and hit Kirito. I put my all into it, doing my best not to move an inch. Then there was a pain in my chest followed by a warning appearing on my screen about my increased heart rate. It was happening again. I was having another attack. I knew I had to hold on for a little longer but my shield unfortunately gave out and the attack went through and did full damage to me. I was sent flying to the wall of the arena my HP dropping drastically. It kept dropping from yellow, to red… to nothing. My screen went black and a 'you are dead' prompt appeared in front of me. It was the end. Nothing could save me.

* * *

I woke up on a couch that I quickly recognized as Asuna's part of me thought I was dead, but I saw my HUD in front of me. To confirm I swiped my hand down to open my menu and it worked. I was elated at the fact I was still alive. I looked around to see if anyone was there but there was no one. I would have thought that Nina would at least be by my side until I awoke. Asuna walked passed the door to the living room and saw that I was awake. She quickly turned around and yelled behind her.

"Guys! Get up! He's awake!" She came into the room and kneeled next to me. Kirito and Silica flooded through the door that Asuna came through to confirm what happened. "How are you feeling?"

"A little out of it but other than that I'm fine. How am I still here? I died, I saw the prompt."

"Klein had a revive item and used it on you. It was from a holiday event from almost a year ago, I was surprised he hadn't used it before." Kirito told me. I was astonished. I didn't even know that there was an item like that in the game at all. I figured that if there was though it would be through a one-time only event. One question still lingered though.

"Where's Nina and DJ?" I could hear Asuna gulp next to me and Silica looked down on the brink of tears.

"Nina and DJ were…" Kirito swallowed and with a shaky breath said. "… Killed."

 **My laptop crashed twice while making this so I apologize for getting this out later than I wanted it to be. Nothing more to say, until next time this is Ragmanthemadman, signing off.**


	13. What Now?

I couldn't believe what I heard. It didn't seem real. I wished it wasn't

"How? That's impossible, there's no way that's true." My throat was tight as I squeezed every word out.

"We witnessed it, it's true." Asuna said choking up at her words.

"H-how?"

[Flashback, third person]

Max was thrown into the wall and laying slump at the base of it. Klein rushed over and pulled him away from the battle. Max was ok, Klein revived him with an item, but not everyone knew that he was revived. DJ and Nina only saw that Max was missing from their HUD which they knew meant one of two things. Max left the party which they knew he wouldn't do during a fight, or he died. With the monster and Kirito's attacks obscuring their vision, they couldn't see Max, alive and well, getting pulled from the fight by Klein.

"No way! You bastard!" DJ charged the beast along with Nina, both hell-bent on getting revenge for Max. Gleam Eyes sensed this was coming and broke his engagement with Kirito. The force from the engagement break caused Kirito to stagger. DJ was able to land a successful attack and landed back on the ground. Nina pushed her luck and tried to perform a combo on the beast. Unfortunately for her, Gleam eyes broke the combo. With one swift motion, Gleam Eyes punched Nina square in the gut and sent her flying into DJ. Both slid on the ground and had their health bars in the red. Giving them no time to recover, Gleam Eyes pounced on them, sending his sword downwards onto the pair, crushing them both. Everyone was stunned. Gleam eyes moved so fast they couldn't do anything to save them. Even Kirito, who just recovered from the stagger, could only watch in horror as he lost more people that were close to him. Silica, who was by the door leading into the boss room, saw what happened and kept telling herself that it didn't. But the more she told herself that, the less she believed herself and eventually succumbed to the truth. She broke down on her knees and started bawling. Members of Klein's guild went to her side to try and console her.

Kirito was furious and unleashed his special Starburst Stream combo on Gleam eyes. His high-speed combo matched the speed of Gleam Eyes. Both traded blows back and forth, but in the end, Kirito got the killing blow. He was exhausted but didn't succumb to it until he noticed his health bar only had a sliver of red in it. He fell on his back, unconscious. Asuna came up to him to heal him up and just to stay close until he awoke. With Asuna tending to Kirito, Silica getting consoled by members of Klein's guild, and Max still being out cold, it would take a while before the next floor was accessible for everyone.

[Present time: Max's POV]

Silica had tears coming out of her eyes while Asuna was explaining what happened. She went over to her to try and console her. Meanwhile, I was stuck between denial and depression. I got up off the couch and headed towards the front door when a hand on my shoulder stopped me from opening it.

"Where are you going?" The voice was Kirito's.

"I need to talk a walk so I can process this." I jerked my shoulder away from his hand and walked out the front door. I immediately made my way to the center of town where the teleport pad was. "Teleport, Town of Beginnings." A bright light engulfed my vision and when it faded I was in the town of beginnings. I made my way towards the Black Iron Palace where the Monument of Life is. Every player that died in SAO had their names on that monument. I had to be sure. Skimming through the names on the monument I searched for their names. The further down I got, the more hope I had that maybe they were still alive.

Then my heart sank.

 _DominatorDj: Died on October 18_ _th,_ _2024 Cause of Death: Gleam Eyes_

 _Nina: Died on October 18_ _th,_ _2024 Cause of Death: Gleam Eyes_

Their names were right below Kobatz and the two other Aincrad Liberation Force members that died in the battle. The first casualties since floor 67 and the two people I cared about the most were among them. I opened my menu and saw them both still on my friends list, as if they never left. I don't know how Kirito does it, deleting the people on his friends list who died without a second thought. Although he did tell me he kept one on his list. I couldn't do it. They were my drive to beat this game. With them gone, there was no point. I walked to the edge of town, where the edge of the castle was. Everywhere I looked I saw memories of us. Having fun, showing the world that it can't keep us down. Well, that changed now. When I got to the edge of the castle, a railing was the only thing standing between me and a plummet to the ground. Making sure that no one was around I climbed the railing and sat on the edge taking in the nighttime scenery. Tears streamed down my face knowing what I was about to do. I closed my eyes and let go of the railing. I felt myself start to lean forward when I was grabbed under my arms and pulled onto the other side of the fence. My eyes shot open as I landed on the ground and still felt myself being grabbed. I was going to shove whoever grabbed me off, but then I heard sniffling, and not from me.

"Why? You think this is the answer? What about the people who rely on you, who need you." I didn't recognize the voice but I knew it was female.

"They were what kept me going, without them, I have nothing left to fight for." Her grip on me loosened and she stood up.

"You're wrong." She held her hand out for me to take and when she did I saw her face and immediately knew who it was.

"Kiki?"

[Silica's POV]

I was giving Asuna a hard time. She was still trying to console me. I couldn't help it, DJ was my in-game husband and someone I had hoped to meet IRL, and Nina was my best friend. Now they're gone, both of them, and I just watched, too weak to do anything to help them. Asuna was kind enough to let me stay in her house for the night and I appreciated it, but at the same time, I felt like I was a burden. I was lying in bed and put my hand in front of my face to look at the ring that DJ gave to me. He helped me out, he cared for me, and I couldn't do anything in return. The thought just made me want to cry my eyes out, but I couldn't. There were no more tears. He wouldn't want me to sulk, he would want me to get stronger so I can help beat this game.

And that's exactly what I plan to do.

[Max's POV]

We were at a café in the Town of Beginnings so we could have a place to talk.

"So, you're stuck here too huh? Didn't think you would be able to get in." I said looking away from her, the past coming back to me.

"I helped make the thing. I volunteered to test it. The developers wanted to see if people like me could still play even with our handicap."

"I think it's awesome. How did it feel to see again?"

"It felt amazing, something that a lot of people take for granted. I know I did." Our food got delivered and we started to delve into a more serious conversation. "I can't believe you tried to pull that stunt again. Honestly, do you not think?"

"Look, I wasn't in the assault team so I could get out of here myself, I wanted DJ and Nina to get out. They were my main drive and now that they're gone, I don't think I have any motivation to finish this game." Kiki sighed and took a bite of her food. "How'd you know I was going to do that anyway?" Kiki was about to take another bite of her food when I said that but paused.

"I was also in the Black Iron Palace and I happened to see you there looking really depressed. So, I followed you to make sure you wouldn't do anything stupid. Glad I did." She was clearly upset about mentioning she was also there, but I didn't want to push her on the subject.

"So, what's your plan? You just winging this game or are you making an effort to try and finish it.?"

"Try to finish it of course. I'm more than capable of fighting with the assault team."

"Then why didn't you earlier?"

"It's complicated, ok!" She snapped at me. I raised my hands in defense. Realizing her outburst, she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry, it's been a stressful few days lately."

"It's alright, I think everybody's been stressed lately." We continued to eat without saying a word to each other. When we finished, we took a stroll around the town.

"You know, people count on you guys. The assault team brings hope to the players who aren't skilled enough to participate in boss raids. You leaving the assault team is like letting the people who believe in you down. You're their ticket out of here, don't you get it? You're needed, whether you like it or not."

"I know I am, but that alone isn't enough motivation for me to clear this game. I'm do…"

"What about me?" She cut me off.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm stuck here too, not only that but there's your guild members, Asuna, Kirito, Silica, and some other friends of yours that are also stuck here. You going to let them down too?" I froze, unsure of how to respond to that. "You can't give up yet, not when there are other people close to you that depend on you." I'm not sure what came over me but I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.

"You're right, I can't. I try to take the easy way out and it will only end up hurting everyone else. Thank you, Kiki."

"I've had this conversation with you before. No need to thank me." She gave me a hug. "You try and kill yourself again, I'll punch you." I chuckled

"Noted." She let me go and we started to head towards the teleport pad when I got a message from Asuna.

 _Rag, get back to my house. Silica is missing!_

* * *

I arrived at Asuna's house with Kiki in tow. Asuna didn't notice her and if she did, she didn't say anything.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"Silica was in the guest room and it was really quiet so I thought I would check on her to see if she fell asleep or stopped crying. Come to find out that the window is open and she's nowhere to be found."

"Where's Kirito?"

"He tried to track her but I haven't heard back from him in a while. He might be in trouble."

"We gotta go after them, but I don't have a good tracking skill."

"Me neither." Kiki stepped out from behind me.

"I do." She opened her menu to find Silica and used her tracking skill to track where she went. "Follow me." She leapt out the window and we followed her. Running down side streets and out of town.

"Who's she, a friend of yours?" Asuna asked mid-chase.

"Ghost of my past is more like it." We continued to follow until we ended up in front of a cave entrance.

"They're in here. Isn't this the hardest dungeon on the floor?" She was right. The dungeon was notorious for throwing waves of high-level monsters at you that give even the skilled players a run for their money.

"She ran in here? What is she thinking?" Asuna exclaimed.

"Kirito's gotta be there too, we have to hurry." I charged in first and the other two followed behind me. We just ran through the whole dungeon. Not stopping for anything. No monsters were in the way which meant that someone was here to kill them. It was a straight shot to the end of the dungeon where we saw Kirito on the ground and Silica going around him parrying attacks aimed at him. The two had really low health and could only take one more blow before falling.

And there was no way that I was losing more people than I already did. I rushed to Silica's side and bloocked an attack that would have spelled game over for her. Kiki rushed in with me and got behind me along with Asuna. The three of us making a circle surrounding Kirito and Silica.

"Guys? How did you…"

"We tracked you here with the help of Kiki." I explained. "I don't know what you're doing here but you can explain later. Right now, heal up and protect Kirito until he gets up." I could tell she regretted coming here but she agreed with an affirming grunt. Asuna, Kiki and I worked together to fight off as many monsters as we could. They came in droves and almost overwhelmed us, but Kirito got up in the middle of the fight and helped us push them back.

* * *

Eventually, we defeated all the monsters and got the drop at the end of the dungeon before going back to Asuna's place. We all gathered in her living room and waited for Silica to give an explanation of why she went to the dungeon.

"I was tired of being a burden to everyone so I went to the dungeon to try and get stronger. I ended up getting overwhelmed and Kirito showed up to try and help but collapsed of exhaustion in the middle of the fight. It wasn't long after that you three showed up to bail us out. I'm sorry that I troubled you. Can you forgive me?" She was on the verge of bursting into tears.

"I get where you're coming from Silica, but you're our friend. If you needed our help we would have been there for you as quick as we could. We care, and putting yourself in that situation to get stronger was reckless. We were worried." Asuna told her.

"Of course, we forgive you. You had good intentions." I said. That made Silica smile. Then, it was time to address the elephant in the room.

"So, before we go to sleep I have to ask, who are you Kiki?" Asuna asked, which caused everyone to look at Kiki. She looked at me and I nodded.

"Well, some of you already know my name, which is Kiki, but what you don't know is that I was Ragman's first girlfriend." A couple wide-eyed faces but overall no one looked too surprised by that. "Would you guys mind if I joined your group? You may not call yourselves one but you hang out so much that you might as well consider yourselves a group."

"I don't think anyone has a problem with it." Silica said.

"I'm alright with it." Kirito told us.

"Thank you, guys." Kiki smiled at the others.

"Why now?" I asked.

"Pardon?"

"Why are you asking to join now? If you knew we were a group before why didn't you join us before. Why did you wait until now." She was taken aback by the question but answered with confidence.

"I didn't know how to approach you with your new girlfriend and all." Everyone seemed to have accepted her answer except for me. Kiki was a good liar but I knew well enough to know when she is lying. While what she said might be true, it's not the reason she waited so long to join.

"Now that that's settled can we get some sleep. With that boss fight, I want to have at least a week to myself." Kirito asked as he started to walk into the back room.

"Sure. Kiki, do you have a place to stay?"

"I can go to the inn." Kiki was about to head out the door but Silica spoke up.

"I don't mind sharing the guest bed."

"Are you sure? I don't want to intrude."

"No, it's fine. C'mon." She grabbed Kiki's wrist and pulled her into the guest room. Not sure what got into her that made her jump at bringing in Kiki to spend the night with her but I was glad that she was feeling better.

"You don't mind the couch, do you?" Asuna asked me.

"Yeah, it's no big deal." Asuna said good night and went to her room. I got into some more comfortable clothes and laid back on the couch. I might have lost two precious people, but I'll still do all I can for the others that are here. Can't give up yet. It's what they would want me to do.

[Heathcliff's POV]

I wasn't sure what to do. I thought that I had picked players that wouldn't get themselves killed. Yet, two of the four died. I don't get how it happened. They got killed by a floor boss? Considering Kirito took the thing down mostly by himself that doesn't seem possible. Then I got a notification, I was being contacted by someone IRL. I double checked to make sure the door into the council room was locked, then I took the call.

"What is it? I'm in the middle of something."

"You're going to want to hear this. The Cardinal System is rewriting itself. It's starting to ignore pieces of its core programming." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The cardinal system, the game engine I spent years developing, was starting to change itself.

"That's impossible. It's advanced technology but not so advanced that it decides what it wants to do."

"Well, it's happening." Great, not only did I have two of the four 'main characters' in the game dead, the game engine is changing itself. Not a good day today. "There's one more thing sir." He paused for a long while and I got impatient.

"C'mon, out with it. I don't have a lot of time."

"The Hollow Area is open."

 **I got nothing to say except I hope you guys aren't turned off yet. Until next time this is ragmanthemadman signing off.**


	14. Fishing for Memories

**I apologize for taking so long. Long story short college has been a huge pain in the ass this semester. The workload has increased from last semester and it gives me less time to write as a result. I'm trying my best to give you guys updates but it takes more time than it did before. All I can do is ask that you be patient. Without further ado, here's the next chapter.**

It's been a couple of days since the boss fight on the 74th floor. Kirito and Asuna went to stay at a log cabin on the lower floors to try and get away from the constant grind. Kirito almost died again as well which Asuna was not happy about. She practically forced him to relax. As for me and the others, we stayed on higher floors. I went to check on the guild and make sure they were doing ok. As expected, most of the members were pretty shaken that two of their leaders died, but that just made them want to get stronger even more, to try and fill the void they left behind. While I know, their intentions are good, there is nothing that could replace the two of them. I found myself thinking about them all the time. It distracted me when I was in fights and I got badly wounded in a couple because of it. My guild members basically begged me to take some time off so I reluctantly did. Silica and Kiki also came along with me. We ended up chilling out on the 47th floor, even rented a small cabin next to a lake. Two bedrooms, one for the girls and one for me. It was morning when I woke up and I decided to take a look out on the porch. The lake was surrounded by a lush forest with plenty of trees. I'm surprised this is all a safe area.

"Hey Max! You up yet?" Kiki yelled at me from the living room.

"Yeah! Give me a minute." I took another look at the scenery before heading downstairs to see Kiki on the couch. "Where's Silica?"

"Right here!" She popped her head in from the kitchen door. "I'm making us breakfast. How do you like your eggs?"

"Scrambled, need any help?"

"I got this. Asuna taught me what I need to know." Silica dipped back into the kitchen and I was left alone with Kiki who was looking through her menu.

"Whatcha doing there?"

"Just organizing my inventory." She closed her menu after she said that. "You might think this is silly, but I really don't mind living here."

"Why is that?"

"Because, here I don't have to rely on others to take care of me. I'm able to take care of myself, unlike in the real world." She looked down when she said that.

"Listen, about what happened before you left..."

"Don't worry about it, that's in the past."

"No, we need to talk about it. I don't want this kind of tension between us, especially if we party up together." She took a deep breath.

"Fine, but can we at least do it some other time? We're supposed to be relaxing and having this conversation would only stress us out."

"Fine, but I think it's better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later." Silica came out of the kitchen with two plates of eggs along with some boar meat made to look like bacon. "Wow Silica, this looks great!" I took a piece of bacon and ate it. "It's delicious!"

'Thank you. I'm not at Asuna's level but I'm getting there." Kiki took a bite of her food too.

"I agree, it's really good." I could see Silica's face go a little red. She went to the kitchen to get her own plate and we all ate in the living room.

"What do we want to do today?" I asked the two of them.

"Why don't we do something different." Silica opened her inventory and spawned three fishing poles.

"Fishing? We don't even know how to fish." I told her.

"So? We can talk about ourselves, and catch lunch while we're at it."

"I guess. Don't expect a big catch though, none of us have a good fishing skill."

"Actually, I do have a decent fishing skill. Good fish pay pretty well if you know the right people to sell it to." Kiki boasted.

"Well at least lunch is guaranteed now." Silica said. We all chuckled a bit at that, but I was looking at Kiki suspiciously. Fish isn't worth a thing unless you master your fishing skill, and there's no way Kiki did that. I don't doubt her fishing skill, but I think she got it for a reason she's not telling us.

* * *

We go to the lake to try and catch some fish with Kiki instructing us on how to do so. We cast our lures and wait for a bite. In the meantime, we strike up a conversation.

"It's tradition in my family to have our names mean something scientific. My real name actually means Silicon in Japanese. I guess this kinda went into my avatar name too."

"That's pretty cool." I told her.

"Your pet is named after your cat in the real world too?" Pina landed on her shoulder when Kiki asked her question.

"Yup." She stroked Pina under her chin as well.

"Wish I could say our names are a part of a tradition. I think our parents just came up with a random name they thought was nice." Kiki said.

"Yeah, nothing to exciting to report on that. Anything you want to ask us?" Silica gave us both a look over and then settled on me.

"Max, why do you have a scar on your eye." I looked at her strange at first, but then I remembered that our avatars look like us from the real world. I've been too preoccupied with clearing the game and surviving that I completely forgot about it.

"I got into a fight at school. Let's just say that people fought dirty where I went." I could tell that she was hoping for more, but when I didn't give it to her she didn't pry.

"Sorry if I went into forbidden territory." She looked really downcast and I felt bad for not telling her, so I gave in and told the rest of it.

"No, it's alright, it's just not easy to talk about. I was walking outside of school about to walk home, but I got jumped. Some kids kept taunting me about my parents so I gave them a witty response, but they didn't take too kindly to that. Let's just say that they fought a little too roughly. One brought a knife and if it wasn't for some self-defense classes I took I would've been hurt way more than just a cut on my eye." I felt a twinge in my chest before I said what happened next. "In the middle of the fight I had my first attack. It took 14 years before I had my first attack and get diagnosed with arrhythmia." Kiki flicked her head towards me.

"This is news to me. How does something like arrhythmia slip by for 14 years."

"I was healthy. I did a lot of physical exercise so my heart rate didn't increase much, but after the accident, I didn't do anything for months. I got out of shape and because of that, when I fought my heart rate was faster than it should have been." Kiki looked like she was about to cry.

"You cared about the accident that much?"

"It was all I could think about. It kept playing in my head over and over again."

"Hang on, accident? Do you mind explaining or is this off limits?" I looked at Kiki for a response. It affected both of us but she was affected on a more personal level.

"I guess we could tell her. She's our friend after all, right?"

"Yeah." I looked at Silica "It's a pretty dark moment in our lives. Back when we were dating, we were on our way back from the movie theater. Just riding in the back seat with my mom and dad in the front giving us a ride. There was a lot of construction happening so we had to take the back roads to get back home. Unfortunately, the back roads lead into some bad neighborhoods. The story is some guys robbed a convenience store but tripped an alarm. They panicked because they needed a fast ride out of there." I was on the verge of choking up. "We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the guys fired a gun at the front seat to stop the car and ended up hitting dad in the head. But the car didn't stop, instead dad's dead weight made the car accelerate and crash into guard rail. I was ok, but Nina and mom were out cold. The way the car hit the railing, the body around the passenger side deformed and pinned her inside. The car was smoking and I knew that when there was smoke there was a fire. I grabbed Kiki from the middle seat and pulled her out of the car. Other than some scrapes and bruises she looked ok, but I would later find out that she was far from being ok. It wasn't long after that that the police showed up. They arrested the two that caused the accident and called an ambulance for us." Tears were streaming out of my eyes now. "Mom didn't make it. She bled out from the broken glass cutting her body. I was told on the way to the hospital. I rode with Kiki because my mom looked really bad, they didn't want me to see her like that." I wiped my eyes.

"Hey, let me tell the rest, ok?" I nodded. Kiki continued from where I left off. "I woke up in a hospital bed not remembering much. I had a bad headache and my vision wasn't what I was used to. In fact, it was completely different. Just random colors that made up no shapes. I heard people talking but I couldn't see them. The colors would constantly change and the shapes would always shift so I was honestly pretty scared. I felt a hand on my shoulder and it turns out it was one of the nurses. She told me what happened and said that Max was also in the room with me. That's when I received the news that I was blind due to head trauma. When we hit the guard rail I was seated in the middle so I could be next to Max. When we crashed, I was jerked forward, but because there was no seat in front of me to stop my momentum, I ended up slamming my head into the center console."

"What about your seatbelt." Silica was wide eyed and very much focused on what we were saying. I could tell she shed some tears as well.

"It was just a lap belt so my upper body still jerked forward with nothing to hold it back. Apparently, I hit my head so hard that it caused my retina to detach from my eyes and cause me to become blind. They tried to reattach it but they couldn't."

"To finish up, I was out of school for some time because of it and when I went back some kids must have heard what happened and made fun of me about it. I fought as hard as I could but when I took a blow to the chest it was all over. Thankfully, a teacher rounded the corner when I took the blow and broke the fight up. He also called the nurse who in turn called an ambulance."

"That's awful. No one deserves that."

"That's basically what happened." The line started to bend which meant I had a bite. I pulled as hard as I could and out came a decently sized fish.

"Nice one!" All it took was it being out of water for a bit for it to die so the meat could be claimed. I cast my line again to wait for the next bite but Silica had some further questions.

"So how can Kiki see now? What's your current living situation Max? And what made you two break up?"

"Woah, one question at a time. I live in an apartment owned by my aunt and uncle."

"DJ's parents, right?" Silica asked dejectedly.

"Yeah. They let me stay after my parents died. It's kinda like a dorm, I live alone and go to school, but my aunt and uncle always made sure I was fed and my needs were taken care of."

"The nerve gear intercepts signals to our brain including sight, meaning I don't need to be able to see in the real world in order to see here. I actually got to test this out in the early stages of development. It's even how I was able to get my hands on one." Then Kiki a looked dejected. "As for why we broke up, I was moving and we both knew it was going to be hard to keep in touch, let alone continue our relationship. We thought it would be best to let each other go our separate ways." I nodded my head in agreement.

"Wow, I never knew that about you guys. Thank you for telling me, I know it must be hard."

"Don't be sorry, it's good to get stuff off our chests sometimes." I responded. We continued fishing for another hour, with Kiki catching several. She was good at this.

"Nice one Kiki, we have enough for lunch and dinner now." We packed up our catches and went back to our cabin. Silica immediately went to the kitchen to prepare some food. She suggested that we go and eat at the Hill of Memories. Not sure why, but we didn't mind. While Silica was preparing food, Kiki and I hung out in the living room. I decided to confront her about the fishing thing.

"You're a good fisher."

"Thank y…"

"But why did you lie." She looked wide eyed for a split second before changing her expression to one of confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"Fishing is one way to get Col that is true, but with the way you fight, monster bounties would get you much more."

"It's because I didn't want to take a lot of risks."

"That doesn't match up at all. One, you're strong enough to the point where even the most basic monster bounties would cause you little trouble, and two, if that's the case why did you try and solo a dungeon? That's one of the most risky things you can do."

"It's not that simple."

"Then explain it to me so that I can understand."

"I WAS ALONE!" I stopped talking when she had her outburst and it was enough to catch Silica's attention.

"Is everything ok?"

"Yeah, just having a chat." I told her. She went back to the kitchen and I continued to converse with Kiki.

"Look, I was alone for the past 4 floors with no col and no will to fight. Fishing was the only way I could eat and not die. It doesn't require a high cooking skill to make and I don't have to fight monsters for it."

"Why were you alone? Why didn't you go to the first floor where people are literally giving away food?"

"Because I'm not welcome there."

"What do you mean?"

"I was in a guild, with my brother."

"KIETH!?" Kiki nodded. "I didn't know he go the game too. I thought he was in prison."

"He was, but he got out on probation. He said he waited in line to get the game but part of me thinks that wasn't the case."

"Where is he?"

"That's going to take some explaining. While you guys were on the upper floors clearing the game, there were people harassing the players on the lower floors who were trying to get stronger to fight with you guys. Getting harassed really put a lot of them off and made living on lower floors pretty bad. So, our guild were a bit like police on the lower floors. We would patrol around and catch anyone harassing others. Told them to mess with us instead."

"When you say harass…"

"I mean bullying other players in safe zones, threatening them to take their loot, sometimes even getting too touchy feely with people too, though that one didn't happen very often due to the punishment system."

"It seems like a good gig. What happened?"

"Things got serious. Players actually acted on their intent to hurt others and some people even got murdered because of that. Our guild got targeted and people started dying. It wasn't long until there were only four of us left, Keith being one of them along with myself. We were the stronger ones of the guild so we didn't succumb to death so easily. But no one would have been able to stop what was coming from happening.

* * *

 _I was running through the forest. The sound of at least five people chasing me followed me. It was a mistake, done in the heat of the moment. Rounding a corner and hiding in a bush, I was able to give the chasers the slip. I then did what I said we'd do after one of us got in trouble, meet at the sacred spring. Using a teleport crystal, I was able to get myself there. To my surprise, the other three were already there. Keith was sitting on the ground, while our other two members paced back and forth._

" _We're done for. We can't survive against all those guys and NPC's." Our member exclaimed. All of us had an orange cursor above our heads, branding us of our crime._

" _What happened anyway? I thought we were just doing our normal routine." Our other member exclaimed. It all started when Keith came back to our hideout after one of his missions with an orange cursor. He explained that he attacked a green player in self-defense and was penalized because of it._

" _I told you, a green player threatened me and I swung at him in self-defense."_

" _That might explain the NPC's but not the players. You did something to piss them off." I responded_

" _Not to mention, since we're in a party, all of us get the penalty."_

" _Well Keith? You going to explain yourself?" Keith just laughed a bit._

" _You have no idea how many people just take our work for granted. We show up to defend them and they become annoyed with us. We show up too late and they blame us for anything that already happened. we rarely get praised for the work we do. I had enough."_

" _You didn't."_

" _I did. Little bitch deserved it. Gave me lip after saving his ass. He was apparently the leader of a guild, that's who was chasing us with the NPC's."_

" _What the hell were you thinking!? Do you have any idea what you've done? We're all branded as player killers and now we're wanted by NPCs and players." One of the members started to walk away._

" _I can't be here anymore. This is too much." Before he took three steps Keith was on him and stabbed him in the back._

" _Did I mention that when I killed him, I enjoyed it? There's something about killing a player rather than an NPC that just gives me a rush." The other member pushed Keith off of his friend and engaged in a fight with him instead. I tended to his friend. I was about to heal him with my last crystal when he refused._

" _I have a bleeding effect. You use that, you'll just prolong the inevitable. Save it, free yourself from this game. You deserve it more than I do." He closed his eyes at his last word and within a second disappeared with a burst of blue triangles._

" _Damn it! You bastard!" His friend saw this happen and continued to attack Keith, but it wasn't clean. It was clear that there was anger in his movements. His moves were sloppy and unnecessary. Keith blocked a vertical attack from above and the two locked swords. Keith let him put all his strength into the attack and when the time was right, he quickly broke the block by spinning to the side. What happened next could not be blocked. Because he put all his effort in the downward slash, when Keith moved he was off balance. Keith took advantage of this and before he could recover quickly sliced his neck. The large red mark on the side of his neck confirmed the attack hit. It wasn't long before he too disappeared. I couldn't do anything. I just let two members of my guild die to my brother of all people._

" _Well sis? You going to fight me too?" I had my hand on my dagger but I couldn't bring myself to unsheathe it. I knew he had to be punished but at the same time he is my brother. "Thought so." He started to walk away from me." I'm going to join another guild. Laughing Coffin sounds like it would be right up my alley. Of course, you're welcome to come as well. Wouldn't want to leave you alone after a…" I thrust my dagger into his back. Keith's breath caught at the sudden impact. I wrapped my arm around his neck so you couldn't escape._

" _We were supposed to have fun. This was supposed to be a way for us to have fun together but you still won't change your ways." His health bar changed to yellow now._

" _You know why I did this?" I shook my head. "Our guild was getting targeted, people put out false alarms to trap and kill our members. The guy that I killed, brought me into a similar trap. If you're going to kill others at least give the intent. Using cheap tactics isn't cool. The laughing coffin and I made a deal. They provide protection, and I help them kill. I jumped at the offer, it was the only way to keep the four of us alive, well two soon to be one now." Keith's health dipped into the red._

" _You didn't have to do that. We would have found a way."_

" _No, this is who I am, and I can't hide from that." Keith took a deep breath his health almost gone. "Do me a favor, survive this game. And when you do, forget about me, it's for your own good." His health hit zero and he disappeared into blue triangles. I held my pose for a second, taking in what he said and then collapsed on the ground and cried. Killing someone is something that looms over you for the rest of your life. And I just killed my only brother._

 _After mourning them for the rest of the day I set off on my own. Safe zones were a no-go until I did a karma quest. To be honest, I put off doing one. I just went and killed monsters alone and survived by using their meat for food. Sometimes players took up most of the monsters or they didn't drop any food and I would have to fish for food. This went on for weeks. Until I finally decided to do a karma quest. When I completed it, the first thing I did was go to the Black Iron Palace, where Max was._

* * *

I didn't know how to react to what she's been through. It also got me thinking about the lower floors. Most of the superpower guilds are on higher floors. All it takes is one competent guild to make havoc on lower floors.

"I never knew that was the case. So, you saw me at the Black Iron Palace because you wanted to see your brother's name?"

"Not just his, everyone in my guild. I let them down. None of them deserved to die like they did. The whole time I was down there I was scared to be recognized, but luckily no one did."

"I'm sorry you had to do that. I've killed as well, but it was more in self-defense and it was someone I didn't really know. I can't imagine how it feels to be the cause of a family member's death." Kiki wiped some tears out of her eyes.

"You guys ready to g…" Silica came out of the kitchen and saw the scene. Kiki and I on the couch next to each other with her crying. "Did I miss something." Kiki wiped her tears and chuckled.

"We'll explain on the way to the fields. C'mon I'm hungry." Kikilead the way out the door. Her façade was flawless. Silica and I followed her, and on the way, we explained the story.

* * *

"What do you mean it's open?"

"I mean that it's an accessible part of the game now. In fact, there are some players already there."

"How is that possible?"

"The system glitched out, it sent some of the deceased players there as well as some others at random."

"Since when?"

"When floor 70 was reached." I stroked my chin in wonder.

"Are the deceased players that got transferred there still alive in the real world?"

"I did a quick walkthrough and from my observations, yes they are. It's like the game is giving them a second chance. Although I should mention that only the ones that died on floor 70 and above are still alive the others are dead IRL."

"Try and stop players getting sent there at random. I don't want players sent here instead of them clearing the main game."

"Yes sir." The call ended and I sighed.

"This system is too much. There's no telling what the Hollow Area could be like." I let out a puff of air. "All I can do is make sure that things go smoothly here."

 **I apologize for taking so long. Midterms sucked, then spring break came and I thought I could get some writing done, but nope! My baby brother decides to be born a month early while I'm home (Kinda cool if you ask me) so that took a lot of time up. When I got back I had two essays so that was fun and then I was hoping to finish this over the weekend but then I realized that Anime Boston was happening and I had to go. Ugh! But I finally was able to finish this chapter and I hope you guys enjoyed it. I will try and be quicker on the next one but no promises. Until next time this I ragmanthemadman signing off.**


	15. Slow Down

**Sorry for taking so long. School's finally out so I got more time to work on my little stories. Hope you enjoy this chapter.**

"Silica it's ok." Kiki desperately tried to cheer up Silica. We've been back at the cabin for a couple of hours after going to the Hill of Memories for a picnic. It wasn't all that great. The food was very good, but Silica got upset when memories of her DJ being here to save Pina came back to her. She began to cry because she missed him so much, as did I but I don't think she let out her grief about it.

"B… but." She was sniffling and sobbing too much to really say anything. I had to step in or this would go on all night.

"Hey, Silica, I miss him a lot too, but this isn't going to bring him back. C'mon, if he were here he wouldn't want you crying." I got her to at least stop sobbing and got her attention. "He would want you to survive and make good memories along the way."

"It seems like it's impossible without him around."

"What do you mean? Didn't you have a good time with us at the lake?" She nodded "You don't need DJ to make a good memory, you can make them with whomever you'd like."

"You're telling me to move on?" she deadpanned.

"Yes, but on your own time. I know it's hard now, but it'll get better, it just takes time." Silica just nodded.

"C'mon let's take a bath." Kiki and Silica was making their way to the door when I chimed in.

"Mind if I go with you?" Our cabin had a restroom but no bath. Apparently, it was public for the people in town.

"We don't mind."

Upon arrival at the bathhouse, we tried to get ourselves in but ran into a problem.

"What do you mean closed!?" Kiki nearly shouted.

"We closed the men and woman baths early for maintenance." The NPC responded. "But the mixed bath is open."

"NO WAY!" Kiki shouted.

"I'm sorry ma'am. If it helps, the mixed bath is pretty much empty at this time." Kiki paused for a second.

"Fine, we'll take it."

"Great!" We paid the fee to use the bath and went to the changing room. But before we got inside Kiki grabbed my shirt.

"You have 3 minutes to get in the water and look away from the entrance. Got it." I nodded. Preferred not getting Kiki angry. I stripped and got into the bath in record time, went to a corner away from the entrance and leaned on the wall. The sun was set in the distance, leaving the sky with a beautiful dark blue color mixed with a little orange. As the bath waters relaxed me, I started to reminisce on the memories I've made here. I remember first getting here, grinding day after day to get the best gear and quests before anyone else did. Helping others when it was needed. Getting those weird quests that gave us special items. Getting married…

Just the thought of Nina made me tear up again. I missed her a bunch, but I know she would've just wanted me to be happy with or without her. But it's hard, damn near impossible to feel happy without her. She was with me when I went through so much, it felt like we would be together forever. And just like that she's gone, and I wasn't even conscious to see it. I told her I would protect her, make sure that she would make it back to the real world, and I failed. I failed her, I failed DJ, I failed Silica, my guild, the assault team, I let them all down. I remember it too, the fight that tens of people were not prepared for. Their screams of fear still ring in my ears.

"Max!?" I jumped when my shoulder was tapped. I then recognized that it was Kiki's voice.

"Yeah?" I didn't turn around to face her.

"You ok?"

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Look at me." I hesitated for a second but I did turn around. Kiki was using her arms to cover her chest but other than that she was fully nude. "Just as I thought, you were crying." She noticed the tears that streamed down my cheek

"No, it was just some bath water."

"You'd think you'd know better than to lie to me. I know how you handle those types of things. Remember your parents, it took you months to even come to terms with the fact that they were dead. Whenever you're sad you put a mask on in front of others so none of them know how you feel. Even your closest friends and family members can't tell anything is wrong with you, but as soon as your alone, your true emotions show." I couldn't respond. She wasn't wrong about anything she said.

"How do you know this."

"Remember when you stayed overnight at my house and you were holed up in the bathroom for a while?" I nodded. "I heard you sobbing. But when you came out and I asked if you were ok you just gave me a smile and said 'yup, I'm good.' When in reality you weren't." She had me figured out pretty well. I couldn't deny what she said.

"Fine, I'm not ok."

"Let me guess, you blame yourself."

"How do you…"

"Because you always blame yourself. When you did baseball and the team lost, even though you only gave up one run, you blamed yourself. Even for something that's not even remotely your fault you blame yourself for."

"Like what?"

"The car accident. You weren't behind the wheel, you weren't the one that pulled the trigger. No one could have done anything to prevent that incident from happening, and yet you blamed yourself for it."

"This isn't like that time, it really is my fault now."

"How? Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to Silica you took a hit trying to protect Kirito and you ended up dying in the process. Klein revived you but Nina and DJ couldn't see that and attacked relentlessly out of anger. Due to their sloppiness, they got killed. While this was happening, you were out cold. Now tell me, where in all of that did you do something, or not do something, that lead to Nina and DJ's death?"

"I didn't protect them."

"HOW COULD YOU! YOU WERE OUT COLD!" Nina yelled. "YOU DID EVERYTHING YOU COULD AND THEY STILL ENDED UP DEAD DON'T YOU SEE THAT!" She took a breath. "It was out of your control."

"But…" my lip started quivering.

"C'mon." She opened her arms, exposing her breasts, but I couldn't see them with the tears in my eyes, and I wasn't in the state of mind to be perverted. I wrapped my arms around her, relaxed me head on her shoulder, and just cried. Let out the pent-up emotion that I was holding back. "It's alright. Maybe there's hope they're still alive." I sniffled.

"Yeah, maybe." Silica stepped in the water.

"Sorry for making you wait, but this had to be done as soon as possible."

"I don't mind." I continued to be like this for a couple minutes then I got off Kiki's shoulder.

"Better?"

"Yeah, better." Then the situation really set it. Kiki and Silica were sitting in a bath, fully nude, and within 10 feet of me. My eyes started to wander and I caught glimpse of both their breasts. Rather than stare, I turned away.

"What? Don't want to look at us anymore?"

"You told me not to."

"True, but I guess I don't mind." I felt a little hot and it wasn't because of the Spring's water.

"Listen, I know we have history, but I'm not fully over her yet."

"I… I understand." I could tell she was bummed, but she seemed understanding.

"C'mon Kiki." Silica and Kiki both got out of the bathwater and into the stalls to wash themselves thoroughly. As much as my perverted side wanted to peak, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

"Damn, not much of a vacation." I said to myself. I ended up getting a little shuteye and when I woke up both girls were gone. All I had was a message saying they were back at the cabin. After a quick stretch, I got out and washed myself before heading back to the cabin myself.

When I got there, both of them already turned in for the night. Some food was left out for me to eat but outside ofthat there wasn't anything to do. I quickly ate and went to bed.

* * *

I woke up to a message. When I opened it, I saw that it was from Heathcliff saying that the scout team sent to find the 75th floor boss was nearly wiped out. He's calling for all the high-ranking members of the assault team together for a quick meeting before going to take out the boss. After closing the message and trying to get out of bed, I felt something holding me down. An arm over my chest to be exact. I looked down and saw Kiki sleeping soundly, in my bed for some reason. I just slid out from under her arm and got my equipment on. I then threw a pillow in her face which called her to wake up and notice me immediately.

"Max! I was just uh…" I cut her off.

"I don't care how or why you wandered in the bed with me. Heathcliff is calling everyone in to fight the 75th floor boss." She just moaned.

"Do you have to?"

"Yes, I do, I'm a member of the assault team so I have to do this."

"Aww, and we were finally starting to have fun with our time off too."

"Yeah, it sucks. Anyways I gotta get going." I opened the door to my room to see Silica dressed up in her gear standing outside of it. "What're you doing up?"

"I'm going with you."

"I figured as much, I asked why are you up?"

"Well, I was wondering where Kiki went…" Kiki popped up from the bed. "and there she is."

"I can explain."

"No need to, it's kinda obvious why you're here."

"Oh." The situation then dawned on her. "Wait you two are just going to leave me here!?"

"You're welcome to come along."

"Well I'm not just gonna stay here by myself." She got out of bed and started to change, right in front of me.

"Hey, I'm still here." I averted my eyes.

"Then look away."

"Putting a lot of faith in the fact I'll do it willingly."

"If you don't I'll gut you."

"Just hurry, I'd rather not be the last one there." She changed into her equipment quickly, a black battle dress with a silver breastplate. Black was always her favorite color for some reason. "Ready?" Both girls nodded and we headed to the 75th floor for the boss fight.

* * *

"You didn't tell us that!" Kiki screamed at me.

"I'm surprised you didn't follow the progress of the assault team. The quarter floors always gave us the most trouble."

"Of course, the one time I choose to fight a floor boss it's on a quarter floor."

"You'll be fine. Just listen to the commands." Kirito and Asuna came up to us.

"Hey guys, how was your little vacation?"

"It's a long, confusing story."

"You'll have to tell me when this is over."

"Sure, lunch at our place?"

"Yes, Asuna's cooking I assume."

"Of course."

"Kiritooooo!" Asuna sternly called out. "Are you promising I'll do something without telling me beforehand."

"Well… you love cooking and you offered to make some after this is over."

"Yeah, us, just the two of us."

"Oh…" He rubbed the back of his head. Asuna just sighed in response.

"One of these days you'll learn." She patted his head while she said that.

"If it's too much trouble…"

"No, we don't mind. It'll be nice having some friends over."

"Thanks for waiting everyone." Heathcliff and his council were all standing in front of the door. "I'm sorry for cutting everyone's break short but this couldn't wait. As you're aware, the recon team sent to scout this dungeon was almost completely wiped out. The lone survivor told us what he remembered." He brought out his messages and read off of them. "The beast was fast and had scythes for claws. Don't let the skinny frame fool you though, he's very powerful, capable of taking down some tanks in one hit I believe." Some of the crowd started to murmur at that. "Quiet down everyone!" Everyone simmered down at Heathcliff's voice. "Thankfully, no minions spawned so it's just you and it. I recommend using that to your advantage and attack it in all directions, using tanks to block attacks as needed." He closed his menu. "So that's what we'll do, understood?" Everyone yelled out something of affirmation. Alright you guys know the drill, you have a few minutes to message your friends and loved ones. When you're done we'll begin. People began messaging their friends and loved ones while others hugged a buddy next to them. Then there were those who just looked around in anticipation for the round to start.

"I never realized this was what you guys did before a raid. I shouldn't have bad mouthed you like I did." Kiki said.

"Yeah, I remember DJ sending me messages before every raid but I thought he just did that because he wanted to, I didn't know everyone did it."

"Yeah, because you never know who'll make it through the fight." I clenched my fist. "If only we were able to do this for the 74th floor boss." A hand was put on my shoulder.

"We got this." Kirito told me.

"Yeah we do."

"Alright everyone, let's get going." All of us, with looks of determination, faced the door to the boss room as it opened slowly and ominously. When it finally opened completely the whole group charged into the room and spread out. For a few moments, the room was dead silent. Everyone was on alert for the monster that resided in the room. As I scanned and saw that nothing besides the assault team was on the ground. Slowly, I looked up to the ceiling and spotted a white creature.

"ABOVE!" I shouted before everyone looked up in time to see the creature drop to the ground. Skull Reaper was the name that appeared above its head before 5 health bars appeared above its head, one more than the usual 4. Immediately upon landing he targets the two closest people and slash them, sending them flying towards me and the gang. Asuna and Kiki moved in front to try and catch them but their HP bars hit zero while in the air and digitized just before they landed.

"HOLY SHIT!" Someone yelled.

"Don't panic! Stick to the plan!" Heathcliff commanded. My group went ahead to attack, Kiki and Silica got up close and used their speed to land as many attacks as they could. When the Reaper was about to attack they backed off and I was able to take the hit for them. "Everyone! Follow their lead!" The rest of the team charged in and got into the fight, copying they technique we displayed.

* * *

For what felt like hours we attacked the monster with the same routine. Attack, block, repeat. Eventually we were able to get its HP down so low that it didn't move as fast as it did and it was a sitting duck for all of us to pummel. When it was finally destroyed, the team collapsed of exhaustion.

"We… finally… did it." Kiki said between breaths.

"How many did we lose?" I asked. Kirito opened his menu and scrolled.

"12 of us died." Some of the group sighed.

"Damn, even when we attack in an organized manner people still die."

"Can we really clear this game? The assault team gets smaller every floor."

"I don't think I can do this much longer. Seeing people die is too much to handle." Some people started conversing.

"That was ridiculous." Kiki said.

"Yeah, it was, but it was a quarter floor so I'd be surprised if it wasn't." I looked at Heathcliff and noticed he still had a green health bar. I then got really suspicious. I have a skill that makes me take no damage from an attack and I'm still in the yellow for HP. My eyes caught Kirito's and he looked at Heathcliff the same way I did. But he did something crazy, he got up and attacked Heathcliff. He didn't have time to react, but he wasn't fazed in stance or health. That's when it appeared, the immortal object sign. I've only seen it on certain objects like walls and monuments, but not a person. Everyone seemed to forget about the boss fight we had a second ago and focused on the new discovery that was made.

"So this is what you've been doing, Kayaba." Kirito called out. Heathcliff just smiled.

"Impressive, but how'd you figure it out?"

"My first suspicion was when we fought together, there was no possible way you could have deflected my attack while you were staggering without system help. The only person who would have that is a developer. Also, c'mon, you wouldn't want to sit on the sidelines while your game is being played by others, would you?" He chuckled.

"No, I would not. Your right Kirito, I am Akihiko Kayaba." Most of us got rather pissed off at him, me included. The man responsible for trapping us in this death game has been here all along, right in front of us. And he has the nerve to just tell us that with a smile.

"YOU BASTARD!" Someone charged him but Kayaba was having none of it and opened a menu and did something that caused the player to become paralyzed.

"I don't want to have to do this to everyone so if you would kindly let me explain." We gave him our undivided attention. "What Kirito said was correct I'm in this game because I wanted to be. And I'll be the last boss on the top floor that you must face." Everyone started murmuring at that. "Of course, not everyone could just gang up on me, no, only a group of no more than four, I even had a plan to make the four unique amongst the others, but they perished before they got to me. Well, two of them did." Then I really got mad.

"You son of a bitch! Do you think this is a game!" Someone shouted.

"In lamens terms, yes, it is." He walked up to me. "You probably want to kill me right now huh."

"More than you know."

"Then why not try, I'm right here."

"Because you wouldn't make it fair. What's the point in fighting if I can't win?"

"If everyone thought like that you'd still be on the first floor. You want to see them again don't you?"

"More than anything."

"Then listen up." He turned to the crowd. "I know everyone here has lost a friend or companion. Well, they're in a place called the Hollow Area, a place where a more mature game was in mind during development. To throw you a bone after getting this far I'll give you guys a choice. You can either continue clearing floors in Aincrad, or go to the Hollow Area. Note, you will only be able to leave the Hollow Area once it is cleared and those who choose to continue clearing floors, won't be able to go to the hollow area. I'll give you guys a minute to decide." The group got together to discuss what'll happen.

"I think it's safe to assume that at least you and Silica are going." Kirito said.

"Why not all of us go together?"

"We can't do that Asuna. That'll leave the assault team in a disorganized state and we need to clear the game in a timely manner."

"What do you mean Max? The assault team will be fine."

"Think about it Kiki, Heathcliff was their commander, with him gone, there's no commander."

"So who'll be the commander?"

"Easy Silica." I looked towards Asuna.

"ME! Why?"

"Well you're second in command, the commander falls, you're next in charge."

"Ok I'll do it, but who's going and who's staying?"

"Me and Silica will go, you and Kirito will stay. Kiki, what do you want to…"

"I'm going with you of course!"

"Figured, ok, everyone all set?" Everyone nodded. "Alright, let's do this."

* * *

Heathcliff told those who wanted to continue in Aincrad to go up the staircase and out of the boss room. Those who stayed got teleported to the Hollow Area via Heathcliff himself.

Upon arrival at the Hollow Area the first thing we checked was messaging. Kirito was able to receive my messages and I was able to receive his, the second thing we did was find a place to stay. A town was nearby so we were able to find shelter, but it was entirely player run. They were friendly though, and gave us a room to stay in. They asked where we came from but we'd told them we would explain it tomorrow. after the day we had, we needed a good sleep.

 **School may be out,but work isn't, sorry for taking so long.**


	16. I'm sorry

Hey guys, it's been a long hiatus and some have been patiently waiting for the next chapter while others have moved on.

First let me say I'm sorry for making you wait, it's just so difficult to A. find time to write and B. muster the strength to sit down and write. I work from 10 to 7 six days a week and sometimes longer if I need extra cash. When I get home I just eat dinner and sleep and the cycle begins again on the next day. If I'm off I usually sleep in and then do summer packets to prepare for getting back to school. Leaving me with miniscule time to write and when I do find the time it's either too short to make significant progress or I end up doing something else to pass the time. It's not that I don't like writing, I still do, but it takes effort that I just sometimes don't have.

So what's next? The next chapter is STILL in progress. It shouldn't be too much longer before it's finished. I just ask (beating a dead horse here) to be a little more patient. My schedule is a LOT more filled than I thought it would be. Not a second went by when I was thinking about you guys. I though about getting a friend to help type but it didn't feel like it would've been my work. I tried bringing my laptop to work… never a dull moment to write something. TLDR, I'm trying. It's just hard and I'm so sorry to you guys. I feel like I let you down. If you don't want to continue waiting, I understand. But I hope you guys will be able to stay.

Until next time this is Ragmanthemadman, signing off.


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